Steward of Winter
by behindthealias
Summary: When Jack died, he had to adapt to being a new spirit of Winter and accept his immortality. Prior to his meeting the Guardians, Jack underwent a rocky transition to immortality and gave up his humanity. There's a reason why Winter spirits don't last very long.
1. Chapter 1

The day he died, Jackson Overland remembered not the cold grip of the pond water seizing his lungs, but the watery image of Emily mouthing frantic words at him through the distorted lens of the ice. He tried smiling at her to tell her it was okay and everything would be okay if she stayed safe, but the cold had numbed his face and limbs, and stopped his heart. They'd been skating on the pond near their town and Emily got too close to where the ice was thin. As the delicate, razor thin ice split underneath her, Jack called out to her.  
"Emily, we're going to play a game, okay?" Emily, stricken with fear looked incredulously at her brother. "No, I'm scared, Jackson. A game? What are you saying right now?!"  
"Just trust me! Have I ever lied to you?"  
"Yes! All the time!" She yelped as the ice split again, this time a thundering crack that gushed water onto her skates.  
"Trust me! It'll be just like scotch-hop. On the count of three, you jump and the farther you can go, the more points you win, alright? I'll treat you to the berry preserves I've been saving if you win." Emily nodded and he counted down slowly. She jumped and, with a desperate cry, realized she wasn't going to make it far enough. Grabbing a branch near by in a split second reaction, he pulled her to safety, launching himself forward to gain enough leverage. It all went down faster from there in a flurry of brown hair and snow. The last thing he remembered was Emily's face looking down at him.

Dying was painful, excruciatingly so, and as the darkness pressed against his consciousness, Jack could feel something reaching out to him. The vice-like grip of the cold water turned gentle and caressing, like a cat's tongue, and seemed to gather him into a motherly embrace. The cold ceased to be as his body changed and ice replaced warm blood. He didn't know how long he'd been under, but a slim shaft of moonlight like a probe worming its way through his lids woke him. His eyes opened, a brilliant blue like no humans have ever possessed. The moon hovered above him and he could see it through the water as a wobbly sort of pool of light and it spoke to him. "Jack Frost," it said with whispers into his mind, "that is your name. Winter has embraced you as its child because it loved you too much for you to go into the embrace of the afterlife." Even as the voice spoke, gentle incorporeal hands pushed Jack up from the bottom of the pond and towards the surface, cradled in a bed of powdery snow. He stared on at the moon, listening for more. "Winter steward, seek out Mother Nature and know your duty," and that was all.

Jack stood, wobbly on new legs, and noticed he held the branch, a curious thing shaped like a shepherd's crook, still in his hand clutched in a death grip. Gusts of wind swirled around him as he inspected himself, wondering just how it was that he still lived. Whispers of things brushed by his ears like sweet nothings that gradually started to form words. The winds spoke to him, many child like things, but many advisory things. _You are the Winter Steward. You control the ice and snow. _Experimentally, Jack tapped the shepherd's crook against the ice of the pond. Blue light emanated from his hands and travelled down the stick with quicksilver speed and fluidity, forming icy fractals along the snow. Elated with the rush of excitement it brought, he did more, calling the snow from the sky and holding out his hands, decorating the forest with ice and frost. The winds took him up and started to teach him flight, taking him by the hand and guiding him to the sky. After a few minutes in the air, he spotted his settlement and started to remember.

_Emily, _his mind said, _I must find Emily. _Suddenly fixated, he floundered in the air and implored the winds to take him to his home, where his family waited. When he touched down by his family's makeshift cabin, he found the whole town gathered by the well in the center of town. The dozen families that made up the small settlement stood in a huddled group. In the center burned a fire that lit up the solemn faces of his family. A pastor read from the bible as his parents looked unseeing into the fire. _Who died, _he wondered, and crept closer to hear what the pastor was saying.

"...while there is no body, we must remember that he was once a dutiful son and hope that his was one of the souls destined for salvation." The pastor crossed himself and bowed his head. The congregation followed his example and bowed their heads, faces grave. His sister cried noiselessly and seemed aloof to the pastor's voice. _It's me, _he realized, _I died and this is my funeral. _He jumped and screamed at them, "I'm here! It's me! I'm alive! Why are you ignoring me," but they were deaf to him. Jack tried grabbing a hold of Emily to tell her he was alive, but she walked right through him. It hurt like someone punched the air out of him and he felt an icy chill that wasn't associated with the weather. Somehow, he'd become a ghost and he had to watch as the people he loved mourned him. The wind tugged at him, trying to tell him to leave the place, but he was blind with tears and grief, deafened by his own sobs.  
Jack spend the next two weeks following Emily around, trying to get her to pay attention to him. He threw things, blew the wind in her face, and even frosted over all the windows in the house. She and his family associated the anomalies with the weather and he found that they ignored him still. In the third week, Jack gave up and found his way back to his pond and sat in the dark at its center with his head in his hands, defeated. The wind circled around him, tugging at him. _Let us away, _it said, _you must learn. _

"What do I need to learn? I don't know what it is I'm supposed to do. Why am I still here if no one can see me?" Jack looked around in the night sky imploringly. The moon remained silent.  
"You must learn to be the Winter Steward, my child," a voice from behind said. Startled, Jack spun around defensively and saw the most beautiful woman he ever laid eyes on. She was everything and nothing all at once and her face held the look of an alien wisdom. Her hair was laced with shimmering gold and her long, graceful limbs were draped with shimmering cloth that seemed to be woven from strands of light. Jack let his guard down and asked her what she meant.  
"I am Mother Nature, the person the Moon spoke of when he brought you back from the dead." She crossed the distance between them and knelt down to his level, for she was tall and seemed to float airily towards him. Touching a pale hand to his cheek, she said, "The winds tell the truth, my darling. You are not one of mine, but you are a spirit of nature. You were beloved by the Winter of this world and were chosen to become its steward. I am here to guide you in your first days as the spirit of Winter. Come, you have much to learn."  
Brimming with questions, but choosing to stay silent, Jack followed.


	2. Chapter 2

Mother Nature's sanctuary was a forest in the heavens, surrounded by clouds and shielded from the harsh rays of the sun by a great dome of magic that filtered it to a harmless level. Jack followed her up through the dense layer of clouds that hid it from view and emerged in a sea of green. She led him silently, never looking back at him and moved quickly, almost too quickly for him to follow. Eventually, they made their way to a golden dais nestled in the center of a pool of still water illuminated by some unknown source of light. She sat and faced him, smiling and beckoning him closer. With a single, slender finger, she touched his forehead and suddenly, he was transported with her into space, overlooking the globe. He yelped in surprise and flailed, thinking he might fall, but stopped as he caught sight of the Earth, a blue marble glowing against the dark outline of space.

"The Earth is a large planet with a complicated weather system that depends largely on the level of exposure it gets from the sun," Mother Nature began, "Right now, part of the world is experiencing Winter while the other is experiencing Summer and still others are experiencing everything in between. You are the spirit entrusted with the powers of Winter."

"I never imagined it would be so BIG," Jacks eyes struggled to take in the immensity of it all. "I'm in charge of Winter? I don't know where to begin."

Mother nature chuckled, a sound like the leaves rustling in Autumn. "You must merely listen to what the planet tells you to do. As the spirit of Winter, you are to guide the natural tendencies of Winter to work in conjunction with the other seasons." She gestured to the globe in front of her and the image changed to mimic the early heating atmosphere of the Cretaceous and said, "In its earliest days, the Earth lacked spirits to control the weather and the temperature rose and fell according the amount of gases still present in the atmosphere as a result of Earth's formation." She gestured again and the atmosphere went through eons of change, cycling through volcanic eruptions and ice ages, all the while explaining, "Without proper control, the climate shifts caused many creatures to die and chaos reigned. It was not until the dawn of man several hundred thousand years ago that I installed the first spirits of nature to regulate things to a more stable temperature that you know today."  
"Where were you while all this was happening?" Her face darkened, a shadow stretched over her lovely features. The shadow was quickly blinked away and she tilted her head owlishly to look at him.  
"I was elsewhere, not of this world. That is all you need to know."  
"So be it, but why me? Why did you pick me now? Are there other spirits like me?"  
"As I said, you were loved by Winter. That is up to you to interpret. As for why now, the decision was not up to me, but to the Moon. He requested that he be the one to pick and he chose you, not I." Abruptly, she cut the illusion and they were back in her sanctuary. "Come, it is time to let you take on your role."

They descended through the clouds and Jack could see the vast expanse of the northern hemisphere in the daylight. Mother nature put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Now, close your eyes and listen to the winds and find the natural patterns of winter."

He obeyed and the winds, delighted to find him back in their realm, fed him streams of data that he understood to be weather patterns. Blizzards here and there, snow levels on mountains, hail storms, snow packs, new frosts, were things that had time limits and levels of intensity. While most of the data seemed to be normal, there were other things like blizzards going out of control and snowfall that was too lacking that stood out as anomalies. Other data, like glacial movement at the poles needed less of his attention because they moved slowly and required less maintenance. The winds fed these data streams to him in a torrent of information that was disorganized and unfocused. He snapped his eyes open and groaned. Mother Nature chuckled. "Given time, you will grow used to this and filter it on your own. For now, however, follow your instincts and do as you will. From time to time, I may offer advice or order certain storms to regulate things, but I expect you shall see very little of me."

"Wait! You haven't told me why no one can see me. Are there others like me?" He received no response. Mother Nature had gone, phased out into the atmosphere with a breeze and a gentle laugh. The winds drew his attention back to his new tasks and directed him at once to strange blizzards blowing across plains. Blizzards and storms, he discovered, could behave like children. They had natural instincts, but went overboard and did things they shouldn't, depositing too much snow and threatening to throw local weather systems out of balance.

"Hey, hey tone it down, you," he would tell them, "You're taking it overboard. Any colder and you'll destroy the plants here and kill off the food supply for the wildlife," and the storms would seem apologetic before receding to normal temperatures with his guidance. Other times, Jack would maintain ice pack levels in the mountains to ensure a proper water supply when spring came. All of these things, he knew through his instincts and the advice of the winds. His first winter in the Northern Hemisphere was tough because there was so much to do. Winters were colder across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Winter inched slowly across the globe, some areas experiencing snow, and others experiencing nothing like Winter at all and were so hot, they were harmful to his body. Asia had been an experience because it was just so vast! His village had maybe a hundred people settled by a river surrounded by dense wilderness. China had thousands of people settled along entire lengths of huge rivers sweeping along yellow topsoil that flowed into channels connected to acres of cultivated rice fields. The winds blew him steadfastly across the world which he observed with new eyes as it zipped by underneath him and soon, he began to miss home and the human interaction he was deprived of. He ran into what he could call other spirits who could see him from time to time, but the few he ever encountered were mute animal spirits who remained by local shrines.

One constant in the ever changing landscapes of Jack's life, however, was the harshness of winter that he had no control over. No matter the continent, he saw hardship brought upon the people by the season he shepherded. He brought with him heavy snows that buried and hardened farmland and sent people huddling into their homes. While considered winter beautiful now, Jack remembered winter from when he was human and the lack of food that always accompanied the winter months. In the days leading up to the first snow, his father would always stock the house with things like salted meat and bury barrels of fruit and grain to be preserved and saved for times of need. It was like barricading oneself against a siege.

Jack's first death came one day in Russia when he was bringing down a routine blizzard gone awry. To take some of the energy out of it, he decided to disperse the snowfall over a few days as opposed to all at once. A nice girl was sitting on a stump alone, singing to herself and staring out into the barren fields. Knowing a storm was about to touch down, he tried to push her closer to a house that lay a mile or two away. He tried various things like blowing snow into her face and screaming at her to go home.

"Listen, there's a storm about to touch down and you need to get out of here," he said, a mere inches away from her face, "I'm trying to slow it down, but I can't alter its course now."

He pleaded and pleaded with her until he gave up and sat next to her, crying softly, apologizing to her with every breath. In a fit of desperation, he threw a handful of snow into her face. The snowball, much to his surprise, made contact. Startled, the girl turned around and said something in Russian that he couldn't understand and looked around, her eyes squinting to see who might have thrown it at her. Giggling, she tentatively threw some snow back in the direction of the last snowball. Surprisingly, the snowball made contact with Jack. Crying out with desperate relief he tried talking to her again.

"Yes! Thank God! You can hear me now? No?" His words seemed to drift by and she got a strange, disoriented look on her face. Crestfallen, he rethought his strategy. Taking his staff in hand, Jack conjured a snowman with icy arms that waved hello to her. Eyes wide with wonder, the girl waved back. Jack conjured sculpture after sculpture of things he knew little girls liked in a trail leading to the house. To his relief, she followed the icy ducks, horses, and flowers all the way home. Exhausted from the effort of making the trail, he passed out in the snow after making sure the girl was back home in the arms of her remorseful father. The storm passed as Jack slept and it seemed all was well.

The next evening, Jack was disturbed to find another girl in the place where he had met the other. This girl, however, was unresponsive to his snowball and stuck her tongue out at the waving snow man. Enraged and afraid for her life, he screamed at her until his throat was sore and could do nothing, but watch as the cold of the night took her breath and froze her bones. As her eyes froze shut, Jack reached out as if to test if she had really died. He was surprised again that his hand met the cold flesh of her cheek instead of passing through it. It seemed he shared an affinity with death that allowed him contact. Horrified and shocked, he numbly picked up the corpse and walked it back to the village, ignoring the wind's tugging at his clothes. He settled her down in front of the house in a bed of new snow and sat, staring at it until the shrill cries of the girl's mother could be heard in the morning light.

He didn't realize someone was staring at him until the winds whispered to him. _The girl says she can see an old man with white hair. She thinks you're sad about her stepsister's death._

Jack looked up and found that it was true. The girl he'd saved was squinting at him, not quite seeing all of him, but seeing enough of him to know he was there. He got up and made another snowman pointing towards the nearest village. This time it had no smiling face, but a blank head of snow. Coupled with a strong gust of wind, the message was clear: Go. Now. Within a few hours, the small hut was emptied of its contents and the family left after burying its lost daughter. Sheer guilt slammed into Jack's gut when they were gone and his knees buckled. He felt suddenly tired and heavy, a strange sort of pain weighing down his chest. It was the sort of pain that couldn't be attributed to bodily injury that felt like a heavy, sinking stone that sucked the breath away from a body and brought no tears. He couldn't breath and curled in on himself in the snow. He didn't know how long he stayed like that, but suddenly, he needed to move and get away from the place. Any place was better than that tundra, staring at the hastily made grave.

Jack flew and flew for hours, unsure of where he was going, knowing only that he needed to get away from the cold. He flew in the opposite direction of the snow and straight into the part of the world that was experiencing summer heat. Somewhere in Southern Africa, Jack finally collapsed, lacking the energy to keep himself awake.


	3. Chapter 3

The next time Jack woke, he was surprised to find himself within a cave lit by a small floating sun that emitted no heat. Groggily, he sat up and examined himself. He was drenched in sweat and had a headache that pulsed behind his eyes. In the dim light, he could make out ugly bruises blooming across his arms through the tattered remains of his clothes.

"You wake," said a voice from across the room that sounded neither male nor female, "Winter steward, it is good that you woke. I was beginning to think you had melted."

"Mother Nature?" Jack groaned. A slow, husky laugh floated to him.

"No," the voice replied, "I have been called many things, but that one is a first. You may call me Anyan and I am Summer. You are not well. Do you remember anything?" The floating sun floated to the voice's owner and illuminated his face, which was dark skinned, angled and feminine. Anyan sat cross legged on the cave floor, his bare feet resting on his knees. He was bare except for a loincloth made of what looked like simple wool. His face bore an enigmatic expression because his eyes stayed closed even as he talked and the tilt of his head was owlish like Mother Nature's.

Jack swallowed and responded in a hoarse voice. "I was flying, trying to get away from the cold."

"That was foolish of you, Winter," Anyan replied, the slope of his slender eyebrows sad, "You endangered yourself by coming to this place where your kind of Winter never comes. I sense that you did it on purpose, trying to bring an end. Might I ask why?" The spirit of Summer was blunt.

"I killed somebody. Well, not on purpose. I tried to get her to get away from the storm, but she died anyway. It was my fault. Me. She was a child." He was rambling, the fever affecting his speech, making them a tumble of words spilling out of his mouth. "I didn't want to hurt people anymore."

Anyan tilted his head back contemplatively and then spoke again, this time in a quiet mumble that came across as slightly angry. "I fail to see how it was your fault. You, Winter, were bringing the cold that is your jurisdiction and a child failed to take shelter. You, Winter, blame yourself for the incapability of humans and attempted to end your life." Jack blinked, hard, and couldn't find the words to answer. Anyan's face softened and he continued. "You are a new spirit, the first embodiment of Winter since the last one died. I have seen many like you who could not sustain themselves for very long, most of whom ended themselves like you wanted to do. They were not true Winter and succumbed, but you, I sense, are the first to be loved by Winter and will not succumb."

Shocked, Jack asked, "How many others were there? How am I loved by Winter? What does that even mean?"

Anyan held up a hand to silence his questions. "Calm. Since I came to be when mankind first dreamed, I have seen Winter spirits come and go. There are too many for me to list. As I said, they were born of mankind's hatred of the cold, not as true spirits of Winter, but as beings attributed to the seasons. They lived on belief that originated in fear and died because they could not bear to receive such hatred. Unlike they, who existed as a consequence of Winter, you are the true embodiment of Winter, the vessel that Earth trusted to keep the season and the being Winter grew to love, allowing you access to its powers. All that you know is the collective unconscious of Winter and your soul is inexorably tied to the season. You hold great responsibility, Winter. Without your efforts, Winter would be much worse for the humans. While it is undeniable that Winter kills more people than my season or the rest, it is perhaps the most important and the hardest to control."

Jack, too tired to think on any of this, nodded and tried to speak, his voice coming and going as his throat protested. "I understand that. It's just been...so hard. Since I died, I haven't been able to shake my old life. I remember what it was like to be cold and hungry. To know that I inflict such pain is difficult to handle.

"You mustn't think like this, Winter. You only do what is asked of you by Winter. It is part of the natural order of things. To change anything that must be done would do more harm than good. I do not understand your attachment to your human life. You are very unusual in that you were once human. Autumn, Spring, and I were born of Mother Nature's body and thus lived our entire existences as immortals. I think you would do well to forget being human and start thinking as an immortal. Mortal lives are brief like candle flames. We burn for much longer like starlight."

Jack knew he could never forget being human, not completely. He'd known too many human emotions and couldn't let it go. His headache suddenly reached a new plateau of pain and he hissed, pinching his eyes tightly shut.

"Forgive me, Winter," Anyan said, getting up and extinguishing the light, "I confess I talk too much. I have not spoken with another in many a decade. Though I cannot touch you for fear of hurting you because of our opposing natures, I think the winds might be generous enough to carry you." Sure enough, the winds picked him up gingerly and he floated with Anyan out of the cave and into the air. Anyan revealed a pair of large wings like an eagle's and flew fast, calling out behind him "Follow. I can take you to a place where you can rest. Someone there will know how to take care of you, help heal you." They flew swiftly north with dawn close at their backs, chasing the cool shelter of darkness until they reached a dense forest in Siberia. They touched down and Anyan suddenly took off, yelling, "Someone will find you here. I cannot stay, for it is yet Winter here. Rest and be well, Winter. I am glad to have met you."

"My name is Jack!" He yelled in response, and then he was gone, phased into the wind just as Mother Nature had done. Jack made a mental note to learn how to do that. Still tired and still feeling that painful lump by his heart, he stood up and hobbled around, wanting to do something other than lay helplessly in the snow. After a few minutes, he ran race to face into a strange spirit in the shape of a woman clothed in precious gems with limbs made of gnarled wood. He yelped and stumbled, landing on his butt.

"Uh, hi, I'm Jack Frost. I was told someone here could help me." The woman stared at him with big, black eyes suspiciously and held out her hands. Gold coins flowed from her palms.

"What? No, no. I'm not looking for money. I-I…" Looking into her face, he thought he saw the dead girl in the reflective pools of her eyes and the grief and the pain of his injuries caught up with him, causing a sob to come out instead of words. Startled, the woman stepped back like a surprised dog. The gold disappeared and her expression turned worried. A tendril of _something _reached into Jacks mind and he could feel the forest spirit wriggle her way in, looking for something. _Child. Immortal. PAIN. Panic panic panic, _her thoughts seemed to say. Flailing a bit, the woman scooped Jack into her arms and started off deeper into the forest. Jack, jostled by her movements, mercifully passed out.

When he next woke, Jack was in a soft bed in a softly lit room with the window open. He was relieved to see that his staff was still clutched in his hand, but disconcerted at the bandages that covered his torso and the unfamiliar clothing he was in. A giant caterpillar with a small head and tiny eyes sat in a chair by his bed chewing on a book. Jack thought he might be hallucinating. "Oh my!" the man squeaked, "You're awake. Oh good, good. I'm Mr. Qwerty. No, don't speak young man, it's quite alright. I'll get Ombric. Hold on a second. No, don't move." He scuttled off on many legs. Alone, Jack suddenly had the urge, the burning need, to be outside in the snow he could sense was just behind the wooden walls of the room he was in. Gingerly stepping out of bed, he hobbled his way over to the open, rounded window with the help of his staff and tried to climb out. He ended up stuck halfway over, bent in half and hanging like a stocking on a clothes line. He saw at once that he was in a tree, high up in the air. The chill air helped him and he gulped lungfuls of the stuff, regaining his connection to the winds. They swirled around him, relieved at his return to them and assured him that all would be well. Winter would wait for him to heal.

"Oh goodness, my young man," a gravely voice said behind him, "What a position to be in! Is that comfortable? No, of course not. Let me help you." He was hoisted into assuring arms and laid back into bed. His savior was a tall old man with a magnificent beard and a cheerful face. "My name is Ombric and you are in Big Root, my home. My lady of the forest found you and brought you here."

"T-thanks," Jack bit out through the pain of his injuries. After he caught his breath, he began again. "Sorry, thank you for your help. I'm Jack Frost-er-Steward of Winter."

"So it is true what the butterflies tell me! A true Winter spirit has arrived. But you are yet young! How did you come to be so injured? You are covered in burns and bruises, most uncommon for Winter spirits."

"I landed badly in a desert and I guess the sun did a number on me," Jack explained half heartedly, "The spirit of Summer brought me here."

Ombric laughed and slapped his hand on his knee, "Anyan! That bugger hasn't come to visit me in over fifty years. He should have at least said hello. If you are Winter, why were you caught in summer's domain? A desert, no less?" Jack had no answer for him. He was ashamed. Ombric nodded as if in understanding. "Alright, if that is what you wish. I will not pry. However, you must eat! I know you spirits don't usually take food, but you are injured. Food and good rest will bring you back to health." With another warm laugh, he waved to the open door and a bear of all things lumbered in with a wooden tray laden with cold soup and thick slices of bread. Jack took the food gratefully and fell asleep again to the sound of Ombric telling him all about the nuances of stick bug speech.

Jack's recovery was swift and he found Ombric to be a welcome presence. Neither of them pried too deep and had comfortable conversations about Jack's powers and Big Root, settling into a contented rhythm. After all, there was no need to force things between new acquaintances. Ombric was especially interested in weather systems and the collective unconscious of Winter that Jack possessed.

"So it is true! You are tied very closely to the essence of cold itself and instinctually know your duty. Thank you for confirming this for me. It is very difficult to meet winter spirits because they die so quickly." Ombric scratched his beard appreciatively.

"Yeah, Anyan told me I was the first to be loved by Winter. I'm still not sure what that means.I get a lot of help from the winds, though. They feed information into my head and I just kind of go from there."

"The winds! They're sentient? You communicate with them? Of course! Anyan has left out many things in our talks. I will have to pick his brain the next time I see him."

"Well, Anyan seems like a strange person. He seems to latch onto something and forget what he's even doing. He speaks so fast, I don't even think he breathes!"

"Well technically, he doesn't. None of the seasonal spirits do, you see." Jack looked surprised. "You didn't know? Seasonal spirits are embodiments of their seasons and retain but the appearance of mortals. They are anthropomorphized versions of vastly powerful forces of nature, and consequently, do not require the normal things needed by mortals to survive. You, for instance, would not need food if not for your injuries."

Experimentally, Jack stopped breathing and found that it was true. He felt no perceivable change in his body, no painful burning in his chest. "You know, I really wish someone would just _tell_ me these things."

"Ohoho, that would ruin the thrill of exploration, my friend!" Friend. Throughout this ordeal, Jack realized he'd made a few friends-his first since he became a spirit. If he counted the winds, he'd made at least five or six, including the great bears living in Big Root he'd started calling Mr. B, much to Ombric's amusement. Mr. B was a no-nonsense nurse, changing his dressings with the speed and efficiency of a well practiced hand. The Lady of the Forest even came by to check on him in the few weeks he'd been bedridden. She'd been apologetic, projecting the thoughts, _I'm sorry I almost turned you to stone. _Mr. Qwerty also came by many times to keep him company, offering to show him how to read.

"Young man, you can't read?! I'm aware the new world is yet undeveloped at this point in time, but not knowing your letters is absurd. Come, come, it will take some time, but I will have you literate in no time!" Jack found himself in possession of a slate and a piece of chalk and a wealth of books stacked by his bed. It was slow going and English was _tough, _but he could write his name in a week and read his first few sentences after a month.

The day came that he could finally stand and it was the happiest he'd been in days. His muscles needed some encouragement, but he stood determinedly while Ombric, Mr/ B, and Mr. Qwerty looked on. He took a few shaky steps on atrophied legs, but stayed upright and smiled triumphantly at his new friends.

"Congratulations, Jack!" Ombric laughed and patted him across the shoulders, "Now that you are better, you must meet the rest of my village."

"There's more of you? How?"

"Big Root is the center of my village, protecting the dreams of its inhabitants. Ever wonder why we are in a tree? It grew on soil imbued with stardust that magically shielded us from all evil. We settled here when man first began to dream and have been here ever since." Ombric led Jack down a spiral staircase grown from inside the tree and opened the main door. "This," he said, gesturing to the tiny collection of huts made from the caverns of Big Root's roots, "is Santoff Claussen, the place of dreams." Already, little people dressed in warm furs stopped in their activities and rushed up to them, shouting warm greetings. They were a happy people who didn't seem to care that Jack was a stranger. The children were exceptionally welcoming, shaking Jack's hands and then throwing themselves at him. Laden with warm hugs, Jack was very, very happy.

"H-how is it that any of them see me?"

"Spirits are invisible if the observer's mind has been closed to belief. You are a new spirit without very many believers. These villagers believe everything magical that walks in. They recognize the importance of immortal beings, for every immortal plays an important role in helping the world function." Ombric picked up a child and set him on Jack's shoulders. "Belief gives most immortals strength. You and the other seasonal spirits are exceptions because you subsist off of the planet's natural forces, but all who exist in the realm of magic and dreams may benefit from the power of belief."

Ombric was right again. Jack felt his body tingle from within his heart and he felt giddy with his newly found strength. He played with the children until the sun set, building them great snowy forts and decorating the village with snowdrops and fresh powder. After many snowball fights concluded and many snowmen were built, the children retired and Jack watched them go, a pang of grief suddenly taking hold of his heart. He had missed this, missed playing, missed being surrounded by this much love, missed being _human_. Though he claimed to refuse to forget his human life, he'd spent-oh God, he didn't even know _how _long- being a spirit, wholly devoted to his duty. As he sat cross-legged in the snow thinking about these things, Ombric padded by and settled on an invisible platform conjured from thin air.

"Thank you, my friend, for this gift."

Puzzled, Jack asked, "What gift?"

"Why, the gift of laughter. Your snow brought great happiness to the children. We have not seen such magical snow in some time."

"Oh...you're welcome. It isn't much, but I wanted to make them happy."

After a moment of silence during which the moon peaked out from the clouds and, reflected against the gleaming snow, lit up the clearing. "So, Jack, would you let this old man know why it is you tried to hurt yourself in the desert?"

"I...yes. I'm ready." He told Ombric everything because he felt that he could trust this man, who'd been much like his father in his time of need. Ombric said nothing, only nodding and looked quite somber, patiently waiting for Jack to finish speaking. At last he spoke. "I am very sorry for your pain, Jack. It is quite true, what Anyan said about Winter spirits. The cold is not usually hospitable to life and love, often chasing them out as part of its nature. Many have done what you did and succeeded in ending themselves," he sighed, "It is quite tragic. Mother nature, though she is a blessed soul, does not always understand these things and can do little to heal wounds of the heart and mind. She has lived for a long time and loses her grasp of these things. Your predecessors failed in their duties because they knew only the cold death of winter from the moment they were born and felt the void that love should have filled in their hearts. The moon was wise to choose you, who'd lived surrounded by warmth, whose heart would never forget humanity." He unfolded from his pose and beckoned for Jack to follow. He led Jack into the forest and swept his staff in an arch on the ground, revealing tiny seedlings.

"You see these? What do you think? Do you see why Winter is conducive to life?" Jack shrugged and shook his head. Ombric continued. "Winter signals most plants to lay dormant for a while and save up some energy so that when Spring comes, they can burst and flower. They would die without a natural Winter. You do that for them. See this? This is life, that which you thought you could only take away." He gestured to the dead shrubs around him. "However, death, too, is necessary to keeping the world at balance. Some plants require the cold of Winter to complete their life cycles and die, allowing new things to grow in their place. If humans die, it is a result of incompetence and lack of survival instincts. The girl who died did not respect the season. Most mortals know the importance of Winter and recognize it to be the precursor to Spring. Your season is a thing of beauty to the people and represents rest and rebirth."

Taken aback, Jack blinked away salty tears and nodded in understanding, accepting Ombric's embrace. "Yes, you can let go of that grief that's building up inside you," Ombric hummed as Jack sobbed into his robes, "It is not good to keep such deteriorating sadness locked away. You have to let it go and accept it." Jack could only nod.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack spent some more time with Ombric in Santoff Claussen, but soon felt the pull to return to work. One day, while he was helping Ombric expand a villager's hut, he stopped working and stared unblinkingly at the sky. "What is it Jack?" Ombric enquired.

"I feel this sort of tug," Jack replied, still staring at the sky, barely moving his mouth, "like I need to go somewhere."

"Ah yes, it is the pull of your season telling you to return to your work."

"The winds are telling me to follow." He turned his head to look at Ombric, looking slightly remorseful. Ombric shuffled by and embraced Jack warmly and then said, "It is okay, my friend. You can go. Santoff Clausen will be here whenever you wish to return."

Jack shot into the sky, propelled by the winds, and made his way to where he was needed. The winds fed him information urgently, showing him that there was irregular storm activity in North America. He landed in the middle of a huge blizzard, way bigger than anything he'd seen before. He yelled up at the storm system. "Hey! You guys are pushing this storm down way too hard!" There were too many whirling clouds involved in some sort of argument about who produced more snow. His yelling ineffective, he decided to use more forceful methods. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply before slamming his power upwards all at once, holding the snow up and forcing the clouds to disperse. The forcefulness of the impact blew snow in all directions, creating a wide circle of uncovered ground and crater in the shape of his feet in the hard packed earth at the epicenter. The clouds moved away still bickering with each other, leaving the sky clear as if the storm had never happened. Shaking out his jarred limbs, Jack whooped triumphantly before looking around at where he was. Sudden recognition dawned on him. His village was the same as it had been when he died. There were a few more buildings, but it still felt so familiar to him.

People had begun to peak out of their homes, seeking the source of the thunderclap that resulted from Jack's display of power. They gathered around where Jack stood, marveling at the apparent footprints in the center of town. Though Jack stood at the center of the throng of people, none of them saw him. It was strange, but it hurt him less now that more time had passed. He saw many faces that he remembered from his childhood in the crowd, older now, but people he knew who looked scared and worried that some spectral figure had left strange footprints on the ground. Instinctually, he called forth a gentle snowfall that seemed to ease their fears somewhat and some of them thought that maybe there was a friendly ghost who stopped the violent storm for them. Giggling, Jack hopped around poking peoples' noses, amusing the children, but cautioning some of the adults to go back inside. As the villagers retreated to their homes, Jack was left alone chuckling to himself, still giddy from his small victory. At least, he thought he was alone. A soft gasp sounded behind him and he whirled around to see a familiar face looking straight at him.

"Emily," he whispered. She was older and bore a striking resemblance to his mother, but retained the same deep brown eyes and kind expression from his memory.

"Who said that? How do you know my name?" Emily looked searchingly at the spot where Jack stood. So she couldn't see him, but hearing him was a start.

"Follow my footsteps," Jack implored. He knew exactly where to take her. Perhaps against her better judgment, Emily obeyed and followed the footsteps that appeared in the snow all the way up to the pond that she visited only once a year.

"Why did you bring me here? Who are you?" Her voice was unafraid, but her expression was openly curious. Jack stood in the center of the iced over pond and cleared the snow from the spot he fell through all those years ago. Emily's eyes widened and she stepped forward, uncaring as her boots slid on the ice. She stopped where Jack stood and knelt to touch the ice as the tears fell from her cheeks. Jack squatted so that he was eye level with her and looked curiously at her face reflected in the mirror smooth ice. Up close, her face still looked quite youthful, though there were the beginnings of laugh lines on her cheeks. He smiled and said, "You've grown so much, sis. When did you get so pretty?"

Suddenly Emily could see a familiar face appear beside hers in the ice and she looked up to find herself face to face with her brother. She lifted her hands to slowly touch his cheek, almost afraid that none of it was real. "It can't be...Jack?:

"It's me, sis," he said, tentatively covering the hand on his cheek with his own, "I'm sorry I died on you." With a broken sob, Emily threw herself into Jack's arms and cried into his shirt. "You're sorry? I'm the one who should be thanking you! I never got the chance to say goodbye to you!" She shouted these half-incoherently between sobs. "We couldn't bury you because we had no body! I-I thought I'd never see you again!" He held her close as she rode out her grief. At length, her tears subsided and she pulled away to look at him, still touching his face to make sure he was still there. As she examined him, her expression turned quizzical and she asked, "How is this happening? Why haven't you aged at all? You look so _different._"

"What do you mean by different?"

"Your eyes are blue and you have white hair. Are you a ghost or something?" She grabbed his head and turned it this way and that, as if trying to shake the white out of his hair.

"Whoa, whoa, seriously? My hair and my eyes are what now? Oh my god!"

"Ten years you've been gone and you haven't seen yourself?"

"Well, no! It's not like I carry around a mirror!" This was true for many. Mirrors were expensive because glass and silver were expensive. Most folks could see their reflections occasionally in bodies of water or polished metal, but in his life so far as a spirit, he'd spent too much time zipping around the world to even notice his own reflection. She pointed down at the shiny, dark mirror Jack had made in the ice. It was true, his features had changed and it completely freaked him out. He spent some time ogling himself before they heard someone shouting from down the hill.

"Oh goodness, that would be my husband," Emily said as she stood, brushing the snow from her skirts.

"Whoa wait husband?! Who? Who did my baby sister marry?" Jack jumped up with wide eyes, grabbing Emily by the shoulders to stare down at her. Even after all these years, he was still taller than her.

"Thomas Bennett," Emily replied, looking away, "The wedding was last Spring." Alarmed again, she gasped and said, "What am I going to tell him about you? He's going to think I'm touched in the head!"

Thinking, Jack scratched his head and looked Emily straight in the eyes. "Do you trust me?"

Something in Emily's expression changed and she nodded her head determinedly. Jack smiled and said, "Just tell him about me and I'll do the rest."

Tom Bennett was the son of the village blacksmith and was a burly man who, despite his appearance, was exceedingly gentle hearted and loved his wife dearly. When the blizzard was mysteriously stopped, he'd gone to fire up the forge to get started on work that had built up in the past few weeks due to the snow. The fire of the forge was his lifeblood and the cold kept it from staying hot enough to work with. When Emily didn't come back to the house, he'd gotten worried. The first place he could think to look for her was the pond up the hill. It was, after all, the anniversary of her brother's death.

"Emily, thank God I found you. I thought you'd gotten caught in the snow somewhere," he breathed as he saw his wife safe and sound at the pond.

"Oh you silly goose, I can take care of myself." Emily giggled and offered him her cheek to kiss. Tom looked her over and noticed her tear stained face.

"I know it's a hard day for you, love. I'm glad the storm eased up so you could come here. I'm sure Jack helped clear away the storm from heaven."

"Actually, Tom. He really did. He's here with us right now" She said it with blunt frankness and crossed her arms, looking expectantly at him. Tom stared quizzically at his wife.

"Now who's being silly," he said as he tweaked her nose, "Are you trying to pull my leg?"

"No, he's really here. I'm being perfectly serious"

Tom's voice softened and he said, "Honey, I know you took his death hard, but you know the dead can't come back. He's been gone ten years now."

"Tom, will you trust me and just hear me out? I know Jack died, but he is here." Tom looked at his wife's pleading eyes and nodded in agreement. As if on cue, all the snow cleared away from the pond, leaving a shiny, level sheet of black ice covering the entirety of the pond. Tom's mouth fell open as he stood, flabbergasted, on the clear ice. Emily hooked her arms reassuringly around his bicep and giggled. Frosty footprints with perfectly articulated toes interrupted the deep blackness, appearing white and then melting black as _someone _made his way towards them. At length, Tom could hear the slap, slap of bare flesh on ice and then, when the footprints stopped a few feet away, he picked up a _voice, _one he remembered from his childhood.

"Thanks for that, Tom," Jack said, finally.

"Who was that? That's Jack's voice. I know it! Why can't I see anything?" Tom looked wildly around him. Tentatively, Jack reached out and spread his fingers over Tom's forehead and hit him in the face with a puff of snow. Tom spluttered and blinked. As the snow cleared, he could see Jack, plain as day, mere inches away from his face.

"Gah!" Tom yelped and fell backwards, one hand on his heart and the other supporting his weight under his back.

"Hehe let me help you up, big guy," Jack said as a gust of wind picked Tom up and set him on his feet again.

"What-I-uh-h-h-how? Emily?" Tom stuttered as his head whirled around, looking between Emily and Jack.

"Shhh it's okay, dear. I just found out myself. Jack has a lot of explaining to do."

Jack followed them down to their house on the outskirts of the village. From behind, he could tell that Tom was asking her questions in a quiet baritone, occasionally flailing his arms around in disbelief. Emily took it all in stride and answered him calmly, reigning in his distress. Jack liked what he saw in their relationship. Tom Bennett had always been a quiet boy, the same age as Emily. Jack vaguely remembered teaching him how to set up small animal traps once when Tom was eight or nine. He was a blacksmith, so she would want for nothing. Really, he was an ideal match for Emily. Still, knowing that his baby sister was _married _and would probably have children soon unnerved him and reminded him how much time he'd missed. It didn't feel like ten years at all. It was as if he stood still while time moved past him and it honestly scared him worse than anything. Emily would grow old and die and everything would change quickly. If the decades moved as fast for him as this one did, he wouldn't notice until it was too late. If he wasn't careful, he'd miss everything.

"Jack? Jack! You in there?" Emily's voice roused him from his thoughts. He was in their house sitting at their square, wooden table, scrubbed clean with coarse salt and vinegar.

"Yeah, sorry. This is a nice house," he looked around appreciatively at the sturdy walls of the spacious house.

"You haven't told us how it is that you're alive again," Tom said gently, "I'm really happy you're here, but you've got to admit this is very unusual for us."

"Yeah, Jack," Emily cut in, "Please, I'm dying to know."

"Well, I'm still technically dead, I mean, my body is. I was brought back by someone called the Man in the Moon in order to be the embodiment of Winter. I help to regulate the weather in conjunction with the other seasons." Jack started his long explanation and told them everything from the day he died and brought them up to speed. When he finished talking, night had fallen. Emily and Tom sat hand in hand across from him and seemed frozen in their seats, processing what he'd just said.

"Did you really try to kill yourself?" Emily asked in a quiet voice, "Is that even possible for you now? You're _immortal._"

"I did. I think it was around last year, actually. It almost worked. If Anyan hadn't found me, I think I really would have perished for good."

"Jack if you-"

"No, don't worry I won't try again. I'm okay now, really." Emily looked at him distrustfully, but dropped the subject.

"My recovery probably made the weather all wonky," he continued, "I'm really sorry about that storm, Tom. I know you can't run the forge when it's too cold."

"What? No, it's fine, Jack," Tom said, "You fixed it after all."

Jack pressed his lips into a thin line and said, "Actually, I only temporarily diverted the storm's energy. There will be a couple of heavy storms in the next month, spaced out by at least a few days. Don't worry, they won't be anything like that blizzard. I had the weather down to a system up here," he said tapping his temples, "I started controlling things remotely by tapping into the winds' energy to herd the cold air and storm clouds around, but I'm still getting a hang of it and I couldn't keep it up while I was sick. It's going to take at least a few months to get everything back to normal again. This part of the continent's got it the worst right now because you're so close to the sea. The sea makes everything change much faster."

Tom looked worried. "The harvest wasn't the greatest this year, we'll need to get ready for those storms."

Jack nodded in agreement, "How are you going to warn people? I know we got Tom to believe I existed, but the whole village isn't going to be so easy to convince."

"Well, Tom's the town blacksmith," Emily said, "I'm sure if we told people at the next town meeting to prepare for bad weather, they'd listen to him."

"There's been a meeting called for tomorrow to discuss the weather. I could try to steer the conversation." Tom said this as he stood up to bring supper to the table. He set out a few bowls and filled them with pottage that had been boiling away on the fire. When Jack was offered the food, he politely declined.

"Sorry, I don't mean to be rude," Jack said, folding his legs on the chair, "My body doesn't really run on food these days."

"Really?" Emily asked, amazed.

"Yes, immortality does have its benefits."

They stayed up and talked for hours discussing all that Jack had missed. After a while, Jack asked something Emily had been dreading.

"Where are mother and father?"

Emily took both of his hands in hers and said, "Jack, father got really sick and died about a year after you. He just couldn't survive the famine as well as the rest of us. Mother died last year, just after our wedding. It was her time."

Jack pressed his eyes closed and took a few shuddering breaths. "Hey, hey. None of that now," Emily said, circling the table to throw an arm across his shoulders, "They were both happy when they passed. The famine passed and mum lived a good few years without hardship."

"I'm just sorry I missed so many things, Em."

"You _died, _Jack. I thought you were gone forever. You're here now and that's all that matters to me. You still have me and now you have Tom."

"Don't forget the child you're expecting!" Tom chimed in.

"Tom!" Emily socked him in the shoulder, red faced, "I was getting there!"

The next morning came too quickly for Tom. He woke at the break of dawn as a sliver of sunlight reached his eyes. Careful not to wake Emily, he crept out of the room that they shared and outside to draw some water. When he returned from the well with his bucket, he spotted Jack sitting cross legged atop the roof, hands at his sides and his staff balanced neatly across his knees. His eyes were closed and his brow was furrowed slightly. He was covered in a light dusting of snow gathered at the top of his head and shoulders.

"Jack!" Tom yelled, setting his bucket down. Jack opened his eyes and directed his attention to Tom. Dazedly he shook himself and jumped off of the roof to land lightly in front of Tom.

Yelping in surprise, Tom recoiled slightly and asked, "Have you been up there all night?"

"What, it's morning? I guess I spent more time up there than I thought. I was dealing with stubborn blizzards up near the French colonies."

"Let me guess, you don't sleep?"

"Not a wink," Jack said, winking cheekily.

Crossing his burly forearms, Tom laughed gruffly and said, "You really haven't changed despite all of this, Jack. You're still as childish as ever."

"Me? Childish? Where would you get that idea?"

"You always made me and the other children laugh, even when the crops failed and we were starving."

"Yeah," Jack said quietly, "Well, I figured _someone _had to keep folks from moping around all day. Kids need to have fun while they're kids, you know?"

Tom bowed his head a little. "You know, when you and your father died, Emily and your mum came to live at our house. They were grieving for a long time. I remember it took me ages to get Emily to smile again."

"Thank you, Tom. You're a good husband to her."

"I can't tell you how much it means to me that you think so, Jack. You were like an older brother to me." Tom stared gravely at him. "I will take care of her."

Emily woke later on in the morning to see Tom off to the town meeting. He was dressed smartly his cap and thick coat and kissed his wife goodbye.

"So how long do you think you can stay?" Emily asked Jack after Tom left.

"Well, Winter here is going to last through the end of January, so I think I can stay a while longer than that before I have to leave."

"Do you have to go? Can't you just do everything from here?"

"No. I can do basic things, but I have to do a lot of things personally. Staying too far away from Winter can also do pretty bad things to my body." He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "Sorry Em, I have to go up to the French colonies to fix the blizzards. They're being very stubborn."

"You're going to New France? That will take ages!"

"No, the winds can take me there and back in no time at all. It'll take me at most half an hour each way. Be back soon!" With that he shot up into the air, blowing wind into Emily's astonished face.

"You didn't tell me you could fly!" Her words were lost to Jack as he flew at breakneck speed to Canada.


	5. Chapter 5

New France was actually suffering from a blizzard similar to the one Jack had dealt with in his own village. The difference was that the people here hadn't been there for very long and suffered more losses. Jack was quite surprised to find this new colony and despaired at its condition. They'd arrived too late into Summer and hadn't had time to set up proper settlements. The makeshift shacks that they'd strung together in the Winter were no where near durable enough to last the brutal storm that was pressing down on the land now. The wind howled, trying to calm the bickering clouds, clearly overwhelmed. As he flew through the clouds, frost whipping against his face, Jack mustered his strength and forcibly willed the snow to stop and dispersed the storm system's energy along a larger area. He took quite a bit of the energy into himself and shored up his power reserves with it. Winter energy manifested itself as an eerie blue glow that Jack tethered to his staff and manipulated with ease. Pulsing with power, he sent out ripples of energy, reigning the clouds in and easing the storm into a more regular pattern. The violent snowfall gave way almost instantly to a gentle sprinkling and the wind ceased its howling. From the sky, he could see people beginning to emerge from their homes, scared, but relieved that the storm had broken.

Satisfied, Jack made his way up and down the coast to sort any remaining storms. There were quite a few of them and it took Jack longer than he'd thought it would. When he finally returned to the village, he was exhausted and the sun had begun to set. Dropping through an open window at the Bennett house, he came across his sister and her husband conversing quietly at the table. They stood to greet him with smiles across their faces that soon turned to worry as they observed Jack leaning heavily against his staff.

"Hey sis, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. I had to clear up some really stubborn clouds, but New France should be fine now." Jack stretched his limbs and noted some slight wind burn on his hands and face along with scratches that were the result of the ice crystals cutting into his skin. "I am never going to leave Winter on its own for that long ever again. I have to do Europe tomorrow. _All _of Europe. That's going to take forever. I'm just glad it snows less in Asia, just in the mountains where _nobody _lives and the storms aren't so bad. Winter in this half of the world is always tough, but _this,_" he shook ice out of his hair, "is a nightmare. I never imagined my absence would do this to the weather. It kind of makes me wonder who the last Winter spirit was. Did he ever take sick days?"

"You went up and down the _entire_ coast today?" Emily took one of Jack's shaking hands in hers.

"Yes, and more, though there was less to fix in the west and further down south. Enough about the weather. How was that town meeting?"

Tom, who was busy building the fire back up, stood from where he was working and smiled at him. "You won't believe it, but somehow, the whole village is convinced some kind of friendly ghost is protecting us. The local natives believe in invisible creatures that are associated with the weather, so they think you must be one of them. Your footprints in the town center are still there and the town heads have commissioned me to make an iron cast of them."

"Hey that's great! I guess they did the work for us. I doubt they'll see me or anything, but it's a start. Did you warn them about the snows?"

"Aye, I suggested to them that we should prepare for more bad weather just to be safe. They agreed easily enough."

Sighing in relief, Jack's last bit of energy drained out of him and suddenly, the room was too warm and the heat of the fire was making him sick. His knees gave way a bit and Tom and Emily caught him under each arm before he could hit the floor.

"Jack, are you alright?" Emily was slightly panicked seeing the sick expression on Jack's face.

"You need rest, Jack. Please, you should lie down." Tom was equally worried about him and supported Jack gingerly, his large arms contrasting greatly with Jack's thin frame.

Jack shook them off gently and said, "No, I'm fine. Really. I've just overspent myself today. I need to...outside...yeah snow. That'll help." Rambling, he stumbled slowly outside and collapsed in the snow, Emily and Tom following closely behind. "Yeahhh snow," he sighed as he covered himself in a thick blanket of the stuff, "I love snow. Snoooow."  
Still worried, Emily and Tom shared a confused look, but decided to let Jack recover on his own. They had more news about the town meeting, but it could wait until morning. Tom went back inside, but Emily stayed to observe Jack. Emily was more unnerved than her husband seeing Jack lying there unmoving in the snow. The last time she saw him alive, Jack's face frozen in his death throes, pale and bloodless as the life drained out of him and he sunk under the darkness. Now, he lay pale and spare in the ice asleep, like a corpse despite his peaceful expression. His body frozen in time bespoke the consequences of the famine that had plagued him in life, but that was the only evidence of it. Despite the hunger pangs, she remembered her childhood being a happy one because Jack was around to make things better. When he returned from work in the fields, he would always rouse the children from their homes to play and sometimes told stories about fairies and magic around the fire. It was important to him that children be children even in the worst winter months.

Kneeling, she stuck a hand in front of his face and was relieved, even a little surprised, to find that he was breathing. Jack breathed deeply in his sleep and curled himself around his staff. Leaning close, she traced the lines of his face with her gaze and noted how childlike he looked despite all that he'd been through. Even so, he was her older brother and it still brought the warmest joy to her heart to know that he was back with her. She placed a hand over the slight swell of her abdomen. Her child would know Jack as she knew Jack in life and her child's child would know him too. The thought that he was immortal now was still completely unbelievable to her, but the evidence before her was undeniable. His body held an ethereal glow of agelessness and his face sometimes held this strange new enigmatic expression that wasn't all the way human anymore. Looking at him now, cradled in a bed of snow that didn't melt when it made contact with his skin, she got the impression that Jack was being lovingly embraced by the cold and he belonged there with it. When he wasn't paying attention, his movements took on a deliberate slowness that reminded her of the movements of clouds and such things that didn't move in the same timescale as humans. These moments were brief, however, and when that sly grin appeared on his face, she knew that he'd come back to her. Jack spent the next few weeks dealing the worrying weather problems, but always came back at the end of the day and spent time with the two of them before stumbling out into the snow to recover. The snow storms he'd warned them about passed by, each spaced out by three or four days, without incident and the villagers were well prepared for it.

One day, Jack awoke the the sensation of being prodded in the face with a tiny mittened hand.

"Hey mister," the hand's owner said, "Are you Jack Frost?"

Groggily, Jack sat up and stared at the boy who'd awoken him. At first, he thought it was a child from Santoff Claussen. He looked around. _Nope, definitely not Siberia. _More awake now, Jack stared with wonder at the little boy. "You can see me?" Jack stood, throwing snow everywhere.

"It's him! It's really him!" The boy yelled back at the small group of children watching them from behind a bush. A chorus of excited screams filled the clearing in front of the Bennett house as Jack was mobbed by the village children. At this point, Jack didn't care how they could see him at all. He felt the tingling sensation of belief magic hit him and fill him from head to toe with warmth as his tired limbs were fueled with renewed power. Children clinging to his limbs he spun around and revelled in their excited squeals. It was a memorable day full of snowball fights and snow forts. He felt something click inside him and found he could manage weather patterns, even the weird ones, with greater ease with his mind. Instead of flying off to the Himalayas to manage a wayward blizzard, he had the luxury of spending time with the children.

The village children were precious and few due to the harsh conditions of the land. While the soil was fertile, few ventured this far out West for fear of both the natives and the weather. The village was far from the other colonies on purpose and was full of refugees of war who came from all the colonies, but primarily the English ones. Jack remembered growing up speaking French, Danish, English, and even a little German. Now, the children he played with shouted all those languages to each other as they gleefully slung chunks of slush at each other. Laughing as he burst out of a snowman to surprise the kids in a game of hide and seek, he could hear Emily's familiar chuckle from behind him. Shaking off the snow, he padded over to her, bare feet gently crunching through the snow.

"Having fun?" Emily had a mischievous look on her face.

"Yeah, it's so weird, but so _wonderful. _I don't know how they see me. They _believe _in me. It's almost like a miracle!" He bounced up and down on his toes, looking every bit like a little boy. Emily was darning wool socks in a chair by the door to the house.

"Hmmm well _someone _may have told them a story or two about you." Emily looked at him expectantly.

Jack flashed her a gleaming white smile and said, "You? Really?"

"Yes, well I watch the children and teach them simple bible stories some days and we village wives work in our own stories from time to time." She winked at him, "I told them it was something that we heard from a few natives we traded with up North."

"You are quite simply the greatest sister ever." Jack gave his sister a hug that was all limbs and giggles. As the day went on, the children were called away by their parents, some saying "Come inside, we don't Jack Frost nipping at your nose". Jack was astonished.

"Hey, don't look at me," Emily said, looking up from her work, "They came up with that one on their own."

"So your powers have gotten stronger?" Tom came home from the forge and spoke companionably with Jack as he washed the black soot from his hands in water gleaned from melting snow.

"Yeah, I can control storm systems and manipulate the energy much better and from farther away. I don't have to fly all over the globe to fix things now. It's like someone lifted a veil from my eyes really."

"That's wonderful! You can spend more time with us and play with the children."

After Emily and Tom had eaten supper, they'd started talking about the village and its growth. It was still far from becoming a fully realized settlement, but the population was growing as more people moved up and out from the original Dutch settlements.

"We got a lot of cattle farmers last year," Tom said as he lit more rushlights, "The grass here is plentiful and there's plenty of room for cattle farms here. More animals to pull the plows, which means I get to make more plows and harnesses. We won't be productive enough to trade for a few years yet, but it's getting there."

Jack though contemplatively, "I noticed there were more buildings being built. I've flown around and I can definitely see more roads coming out this way, mostly post roads. You know there's a mine down South now?"

"Yes, we've had a few miners come up here for tools," Emily cut in, "but not too many. They know we don't have much to spare."

The conversation went along those lines for a few minutes. Jack's attention drifted in and out of it, half focused on new weather patterns. After he was silent for a while, Tom cocked his head and asked what was wrong. Looking troubled, Jack said, "The last snowstorm is coming," his brows furrowed in concentration, "I can't stop it."

His voice was strange and a bit monotone as if he were in a trance. His blue eyes grew dim and suddenly, he wasn't in the Bennett house anymore. In his mind's eye, he was in Mother Nature's sanctuary in the sky, standing on the clear pool of water before her throne. He left his body behind frozen at the Bennett house, Emily and Tom worriedly trying to rouse him.

"Hello, Jack." Mother Nature greeted him as a mother would her child, "Worry not, you will be back with your family before long."

"What am I doing here?" He was slightly wary of this strange meeting.

"I know you are trying to stop this storm system from dropping on your village," she said, gesturing to the translucent globe floating in the center of the sanctuary, "This storm is the tail end of a large tangle of clouds, most of which you were successful in untangling. However," she looked at him with that strange ageless look, "you cannot do anything about this last storm. The original storm was much too large. It has to come down."

"I know that," Jack said, staring down at his feet, "I just thought that maybe I could ease it up a little bit, spread it out farther."

Mother Nature softened somewhat. "You cannot suppress the natural tendencies of the weather, Jack. You can regulate, yes, and you have made great progress in stabilizing the frost and snow, but you cannot suppress it completely."

"I understand," Jack replied, trance-like again.

"Good. Now, I understand you've made progress with your powers. It is quite unexpected for a spirit as young as you to have made it this far. Might I ask how?"

"I think it might have been the children," he smiled, "Belief magic."

"I see," she breathed, smiling softly, "I am pleased, Jack. Normally, spirits of nature do not normally seek out or achieve the belief of mortals. You, however, are not one of mine, as I have said before. The Man in the Moon does silly things sometimes."

"Who is he? You never answered any of my questions when we last spoke."

With breathy chuckles, Mother Nature answered, "Hmm that is not my place to tell. When it is time, all will be revealed to you. Fret not." Jack could feel himself being pulled back into his body before he could complain.

"Jack! Can you hear me? Are you alright?" Emily was slapping him gently on the cheeks as Tom shook him.

Shaking his head, Jack looked at them and blinked rapidly. "You're back with us, then?" Tom looked at him closely.

"Yeah, sorry about that."

Emily took one of his hands, noting that they were cold and slightly frosted over. "What happened?"

"It was Mother Nature. She wanted to tell me there was nothing I could do about this next storm."

"That's grim news. How bad will it be?" Tom looked grave.

"I'm not sure. I can just _feel _it. It won't be as bad as the one I stopped, but you guys will be holed up for at least two or three days. The snow will be thick and the wind will make things colder. We need to warn people, make them stay inside and bring the animals in."

"The town heads believe the storms to be over," Tom replied, "Everyone has a few things stockpiled, but not nearly enough to last for as long as you say."

"I have an idea," Emily said excitedly, "The villagers have started saying that when Jack Frost nips at their noses, the snows will come."

"You're saying they'll prepare for the weather if I pinch their noses?" Jack was skeptical.

"No, that might work," said Tom, "The villagers have never been keen on superstitions, but recently, they've started taking more stock in it."

"Well yeah, but cold noses aren't going to persuade anyone. On top of that, I can't cover everyone in the village all at once. There's only one of me!"

"Give it a try?" Emily looked hopeful. Shaking his head, he conceded.

The next day, he set out trying to scare people into preparing for the storm. He flew around lowering the temperature drastically, frosting over windows, and trying to pinch the noses of every passerby he could get his hands on. None of it had any effect and nobody exhibited any sort of alarm at all. The village children saw him and one tugged on his shirtsleeve, asking him what he was doing.

"Hey kiddo," he said, squatting dejectedly in front of the little boy, the same one who'd woken him the day before.

"Why are you sad, Jack? Why are you poking peoples' noses?"

"Well there's a big snowstorm coming and I'm trying to get your parents to get ready for it."

"Why aren't they listening to you?"

"Well, grown-ups can't see me because they don't think I'm real."

Scrunching his face up in deep thought, the tiny boy who couldn't be more than 5 or 6 said, "We could tell them for you!"

Well, there was a thought. Jack considered it for a moment. "Yeah sure, kid." It probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try. The boy ran off excitedly to his friends and they huddled off together in their little throng to start their mission of grave importance.

Jack sighed and decided that he needed to think. He flew around absently on the wind's back and somehow ended up at his pond. _Why would the wind bring me here? _Shrugging, he sat down cross legged in the middle of the frozen water and stilled, sorting weather patterns in his head to take his mind off of the current predicament. When he opened his eyes several hours later, it was because he sensed something tiny crawling up his knees. He looked down and was surprised to find a tiny wisp of a creature like a tiny humanoid waving its arms up at him. After a while, Jack realized that it was actually waving its legs at him. The top half of it was stuck in a mound of snow. He grasped it by one...foot and plucked it out of the snow. Looking at it now, he saw that it was a featureless translucent blob shaped vaguely like a tiny person with a beacon for a head that looked left and right confusedly. It saw Jack and waved its arms around excitedly. It scuttled over to Jack's still outstretched hand gave his index finger a hug. As it hugged his finger, its head started blinking a bright blue light. Jack looked around and was surprised to find more of the little creatures appearing on the pond. The winds swirled around him and whispered to him. _They are winter sprites. They have been without a master for many a century. They are happy._

The new sprites waved their arms excitedly as well. The whole congregation of sprites seemed to be expecting something. Experimentally, he dispersed a cloud of his energy, translucent blue and vibrant. Right away, he could feel the sprites tie themselves into his powers and while they still held complete independence, Jack could guide them with his thoughts. Their thoughts streamed into his own, composed of incoherent words coupled with just collective feelings. They were a hive mind that could communicate with each other with great efficiency like a colony of ants. Standing, Jack waded through the crowd of sprites, many still appearing as he led them into the village. Silently still, he instructed them to warn the villagers of the impending storm. At once, they scattered into the village and each found a villager to cling to. The effect was instant. People looked up at the sky and seemed to sense that bad weather was on its way. By supper, the town had barricaded itself safely within their homes with ample supplies to weather the storm.

The little sprites gathered into a line, beckoning excitedly to Jack, telling him to follow. He rose into the air and found that the sprites could ride the winds as well as he could. They led him to a small native settlement a few hundred miles North of them and gestured to it, conveying concern. "You want to warn them too?" Jack followed them down and was surprised to find that some of the natives could see him, or at least knew he was there. The spoke reverently to him and the sprites, guiding them to an old woman in a dark hut. She was the only one of the group who could see the sprites and spoke to Jack again in a language he didn't understand. The sprites, surprisingly, translated for him and left impressions, rather than words, in his head. She was surprised at his visit and learned through the sprites of the impending storm. She called him a name that he didn't understand and seemed to ask for some sort of blessing. It was a strange encounter. The woman couldn't see all of him and seemed only to know the general direction of where he sat. _Winter Child, _the winds told him. It dawned on him that the last Winter spirit to exist must have originated here.

Jack at last went to Tom's forge after the natives and several other settlements had also been warned of the impending snow storm. Tom was busily barricading his shop by nailing clapboard to the windows and doors. When he finished, he wiped his hands and turned to Jack, a wide grin plastered to his face. "You did it!" He grasped Jack by the shoulders.

"Yeah I did. You're not going to believe it." Jack held up the sprite he'd met earlier to show Tom. "I found this little guy and a bunch of his friends helped me."

Tom squinted at Jack's empty hands and shook his head. "I don't see it, Jack."

"What? Really?" Jack frowned, looking slightly forlorn. He placed the little sprite on Tom's shoulder and waited for something to happen. Tom looked from his shoulder to Jack and shrugged, still confused and unaware as ever. Jack took the sprite back and shrugged. "Maybe they're only visible to spirits. Let's go. The storm's going to roll in within the hour."

In the Bennett house, Emily was busy hauling in buckets of snow to store and extra rashes of salted meat hung from the rafters in the kitchens. Their chickens had also been brought inside. "Hey you two," she said, walking past them with a heavy looking bucket. The men relieved her of the bucket and carried inside for her, shutting the door and bolting it behind them one last time. Fire roaring, Emily and Tom snuggled into blankets at the dinner table.

"Who's your friend, Jack?" Emily poked at the sprite on Jack's shoulder.

"You can see him?" Jack was squirrely with excitement. "It's apparently a Winter sprite. I have absolutely no idea where they came from, but there are thousands of them. They're tied to me through my powers and they listen to whatever I tell them to do. Oh just look at this guy. Cute, right?"

"Slow down Jack," his sister laughed as she took the sprite from him. The little creature wrapped its spindly limbs around her finger. "I saw a few in the village while I was buying supplies. I was waiting to ask you about them."

"I think you might see it because we share blood or something."

Tom harumphed, feeling left out. "Yes, well go on. Tell us how you met them." Emily shot Tom a look and he withered, returning to his usual self. Jack told them all that happened since he left them that morning and both were astonished by his discoveries.

"The natives, huh?" Tom cupped a mug of cider contemplatively. "They don't speak much to us besides to trade, but a few of their stories reach our ears from time to time. I heard something a while back about a frost child. Nothing specific, though."

Jack nodded, "Yeah, the winds told me something similar. A child appeared out of nowhere and could do things like freeze off fingers. He helped the natives track game in the snow and then left all of a sudden on a piece of floating ice in the river...I think he might have ended himself." Jack added that last bit somberly. Emily patted his forearm comfortingly.

"So this winter spirit appeared because the natives believed in other spirits?" Tom tried to change the subject a bit.

"It sounded as if he was the natural result of all that belief magic within the tribe." Jack knitted his fingers together. "It wasn't just this one tribe of people. All of the natives I visited had some variation of this story and I guess he just spawned as a result of all those stories. The difference with me, I guess, was that I wasn't born because of stories. I was human first and the stories came after. I don't need people to believe in me to exist because I'm connected to, well, _Winter._"

"You lost me there, brother," Emily said confusedly, rubbing her temples slightly. Jack was lapsing into spirit talk and none of it really made sense to her.

Trying to explain it better, Jack said, "It's like this. The world is this giant ball of natural energy and the seasons make up the most of that energy. I don't have everything completely worked out, but so far I've got the sense that the seasons don't really mean specific times of the year, but the weather patterns people associate with the seasons. Even if I'm in charge of Winter, it doesn't mean I manage the Winter as in the time of year. I only manage the cold and all things attributed to it like frost and snow. Winter in India, for example, is all monsoons," Jack grimaced, "and I don't do rain. So I'm what you would call the guy who represents all of that cold energy. I don't really control the weather. I just regulate stuff that happens naturally so that no one gets hurt."

"It sounds like you're some kind of god," Emily said, "like those old gods no one really talks about anymore."

"The thing is, those might still exist somewhere," Jack shrugged, "With belief magic, anything anyone's ever told a story about might actually exist."

"That really changes everything then," Tom sounded on the verge of being afraid of whatever revelation he was having, "Our parents came here to get away from Old World religion, but if it really is as you say, there was almost no point to it. If _everything _exists, there's really no point in arguing about how Christianity is organized at all." Tom paused. "Christ. What if _Christ _exists?"

"I'll let you know if I meet him, but no promises." Jack leaned back in his chair, all this thinking messing with his head. "The point is that most belief based spirits will probably be the result of stories humans told, meaning faith is still pretty awesome if it can _actually_ generate a real spirit."

Jack slipped out through a window when Emily and Tom retired to bed. He flew among the raging storm clouds, carefully containing the massive storm system and ensured the stages of storm went smoothly. As the ice and sleet pounded on the land below, he marvelled at the power of the storm. The massive fleets of hardy clouds moved in like an exodus of broiling energy that could be called beautiful and terrifying all the same. He fed off of the energy of the storm, losing himself in it as it played out. At the end of the three day storm, he finally descended from the sky and ushered in a soft snowfall, the kind that nobody could resist coming out to see. The winds had quieted and the winter sprites floated on their backs wantonly, blissfully enjoying the storm's residual energy. They drifted into houses and helped to coax the villagers outside. Soon enough, life returned to normal, the danger past.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

Since the children spread Jack's warnings mere moments before the weather actually took a turn for the worse, Jack Frost became a household name, not used in the same capacity as God, but like kissing under the mistletoe or saying "God bless you" when somebody sneezes. `

Jack spent the remainder of Winter in the northern half of the world with Emily, lessening his own burden by utilizing the sprites. As Winter crept farther away from them and the land showed the first signs of thawing, Jack thought he might have to leave soon, but put it off for as long as he could so that he might spend more time with Emily. While the strain of being away from the epicenter of Winter tired him somewhat, his powers had grown since he first emerged from the lake, taking the edge off of the effects. He was slightly more tired, yes, but he could bear it with little discomfort. One day, after the children had gone home for the day, he made his way up to his pond and sat meditatively on the still frozen water and closed his eyes, concentrating hard on the weather patterns in the Southern half of the world. There wasn't much to do since Africa and the Southern half of the New World were usually untouched by his snow, save for the mountains. Still, it couldn't hurt to do regular monitoring.

After a while, his meditation was disturbed by the soft whisper of flesh on smooth ice. Snapping his eyes open, he was surprised to find himself face to face with a woman garbed in a robe of flowers who knelt in front of him, tilting her head to examine him. He fell backwards in surprise, scrambling to his feet in a defensive stance. He could tell right away that she was another spirit because the _look_ in her eyes bespoke infinite age. She moved closer to him, impossibly long, black hair trailing behind her, the corners of her tiny red lips turned up in a gentle smile. Her distant green eyes were framed by long, thick eyebrows.

"I am sorry for the intrusion." She reached out a hand and touched his cheek experimentally. The skin of her palm was soft and warm. "I had only meant to examine what was causing Winter to linger for so long here." She gestured to the frozen pond. "I see that it is because you are here, Winter."

The way she addressed him reminded him of Anyan. He relaxed his posture. "Spring?" he asked tentatively. The woman nodded and replied, "I am called many things, but the one I know well is Magu. That will do."

"Okay, Magu. Nice to meet you. I'm Jack Frost." He held out his hand to her, but was surprised when she scooped it up in both of hers, long nails delicately tracing the lines of his palms. This escalated and her hands made their way to the rest of his body, intent on unraveling his secrets.

"My dear," she hummed in a rich, husky voice, "You are curiosity, even among us spirits." She circled around him slowly, eyes closely inspecting every inch of his body.

"Well, if you're going to tell me that I'm weird because I was human, I heard the same from Anyan." Jack fidgeted under her gaze. She finally stopped circling him and met his eyes.

"Oh no, you are _very _special. You have a lot of potential as a spirit. You are Winter's child and you have complete access the Winter energy streams. You could be _powerful._" Her face took on a dubious expression that soon faded to the original passive one that bespoke age. "Fret not, child for you are yet young. In a century or two, maybe."

"What? I don't know, I mean I _do _have white hair. I'm practically an old man. If you're talking about my height or something, this is as tall as I'm going to get."

Unphased by his banter, Magu continued. "Listen to me when I tell you that you must be patient. Immortality will seem like the longest wait you have ever endured. Many who came before you suffocated in the stagnancy of immortality and went to sleep without ever waking again." The message was again cryptic. "Hmmm anyhow, I came here to see why this pond refuses to thaw. If it is special to you, I can make an exception. I have begun to wake the land under the snow and Spring will commence soon. While our seasons do not usually conflict, I think it best that you move on soon. No doubt, you have felt your powers weakening the longer you stay."

"I know, I know. I'll melt if I try to give Anyan a hug. Thanks for the warning."

"Thank me? Whatever for? Your presence regulates Winter and makes my job easier. It is very advantageous to me that you survive." She cocked her head. "Tell me, where do you live? It cannot be here. There is nothing here, nothing permanent."

"Live? I live, you know, here and there."

Magu furrowed her smooth, pale brow and said, "No, you misunderstand," Her tone was more confused than frustrated as if she thought Jack should have known all of this. "The three of us, Summer, Autumn and I, have places where the weather patterns remain the same and we can find respite from time to time. It is not necessary, but it does allow us to rest. I made my home in a forest in China while Summer made his home in a desert in Africa. Autumn made hers in Ireland somewhere under a tree." Jack arched an eyebrow. Magu shrugged. "She has her quirks. You will see when you meet her. As Winter, you have many options, the two swathes of land at either end of the globe would offer you the most privacy."

Jack thought on it. Since Winter in the South was hardly time consuming, he might try looking around for his own place. He thanked Magu and she smiled at him, her perfectly white teeth flashing at him behind blood red lips. "It is quite fortunate that we met, it is not often I run into the others. I must go now, but I do not doubt that we will see more of each other." It wasn't anything Jack hadn't heard before. The other seasonal spirits marked time by the number of times the _saw _each other, which wasn't encouraging to him. He didn't want time to move that far ahead of him, didn't know what to think of beings who counted centuries as he would days. Still, he liked the other seasons he'd met so far and wanted to count them among his friends. Magu bade him farewell and melted away silently into the wind. Jack still needed to learn that one.

It was midday when Jack returned to the Bennett house. Emily welcomed him cheerfully, her growing abdomen getting in the way of her customary embrace. The child would come in the Summer, he supposed. Well after he had to leave them. He pouted thinking about missing the birth of his nephew, but he supposed Emily would understand. After all, he'd be back soon enough. He paused in his thoughts and grimaced. So a year was "soon enough" now? He shook his head, clearing it and shaking away the lump he felt forming in his throat. He sat in a windowsill, his leg dangling off of the edge. Feeling drowsy, he could hear the wind calling to him, beckoning him away playfully. _Let us away, _it said, _Winter has moved away from here. We must away. _The sprites riding on the backs of the winds sent him much the same impression. "I can't go, not yet", he whispered. Emily's head snapped up from her sewing, watching him curiously. She'd noticed Jack's lethargy and knew full well that he needed to go. The days were getting warmer and the snow was giving way to new greenery. She padded over softly to him and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Jack," she spoke softly, afraid of startling him. He looked up at her blearily, almost not hearing her. "Jack, if you need to go, even if I don't want you to- and lord knows I don't want you to- you should."

Jack frowned, still feeling foggy. His heart ached at the thought of leaving her so soon. "I don't want to, Em." He could feel the telltale signs of tears pricking at his eyelids.

"Jack," a third voice called. It was Tom. He'd been watching the scene from the door. "Please, we don't want you to hurt yourself. Staying here is taking its toll on your body. I don't-" his voice wavered a bit, "I don't want you to leave, not so soon after you'd come back to us." Emily nodded in agreement and added, "But you can't stay like this. You are responsible for a great many things, things we can't hope to understand. What we do understand is that even so, you are family and you are welcome here until the end of time."

"The end of time," Tom confirmed.

Jack gave up fighting the tears. He gave both a fierce embrace and, on that peaceful day when the spring sunshine had just begun to filter through the new leaves, he left.

As he moved further and further south, towards the swath of cold land he knew lay at the bottom of the world, his body uncurled from its repose and he was alert within seconds of making it into the air. The winds and the sprites inquired as to where he would go, sensing that Jack wouldn't bother to sojourn to the southern Winter this year.

"I'm finding a home for myself, wind," Jack said as he spun in the air, as graceful as if he were born flying and as natural as breathing. The winds were elated and the sprites flew in spirals around him. Suddenly, he got the impression that they wanted him to follow them somewhere. He could see the ice covered land stretching out before him and the sprites made a spiraled path down into a cavern near the exact center of the huge landmass. This place would be perfect because it was still undiscovered by humans. The North would have worked, but it was all ice, too fluid and changing too often for him to establish anything permanent. He touched down, taking in the yawning cavern hidden perfectly by a wall of unscalable ice. Inside, the cavern was huge, carved into the bedrock somehow. It was lit dimly by an ice dome hanging down into the center of the place that was filled with the weak light of blue translucent energy. Knowing what to do, he tied his own energy to the ice in the dome and supplied it with new energy, feeding partially off of the cold energy of the surrounding ice and permafrost. The dome throbbed with renewed vigor and the cavern filled with a wash of light, revealing a large space dominated principally by a globe like the one in Mother Nature's sanctuary. The rest of the cavern was left empty save for a chair low to the ground made out of the same stone the rest of the cavern shaped like a cradle of branches, positioned just so that he had the best view of the globe as it turned before him when he sat.

Jack sat in the chair, or throne as he realized later, and closed his eyes, tuning into the power channels of the cavern. It was _alive _and malleable to change. He felt something within the energy stream change and when he opened his eyes, the rounded walls of the cavern were changed to resemble something like the interior of Big Root with passageways on one floor and two spiral staircases leading to a second floor of yet more passages. He got up and wandered around the place, marvelling at its smooth walls and the other rooms were likewise lit by domes of light that seemed to draw energy from the large one in the main room. Some were empty and others were outfitted with furniture made from the same stone as before as if it had been grown out of it. At length, he came to a secondary cavern capped with a ceiling of ice that looked something like a wintery forest of evergreens. The sprites had gathered together here and gestured to the trees that were pregnant with snowdrops that dripped off of every branch. Looking closer, he saw that this place was the birthplace of the sprites, who spawned from the snowdrops on the trees, unfolding as they dropped sporadically to the floor.

Jack made his way back to the main cavern dazedly. He could fit an army in these rooms if he needed to. There was one passageway left in the back of the room just behind the throne. He followed it into a modest library full of books preserved in time on stone shelves. Some of the books were in English, but many were not. Jack was vibrating with curious, excited energy that had him bouncing on his heels. He needed to know more about this place, figure out why it existed at all. A sudden thought came to him. _Ombric. _Yes, Ombric might know something about this place, but Siberia was so _far_. Another thought. He could try phasing there, traveling by melting into the wind like the other spirits did, but how? Sitting on the throne, he closed his eyes and concentrated hard, imagining himself dissolving away into the wind. Nothing happened. He pictured Siberia and Big Root, willing his body to be there. He sat there for hours and was about to give up when something pulled at his sternum and he found himself sitting in front of the entrance to Big Root. He scrambled to his feet, elated. It was midday and some of the villagers waved at him. Jack returned the greeting and hastily made his way into Big Root, up the great staircase, and into Ombric's study where the old man was chatting away with Mr. Qwerty and Mr. B.

"Oh Jack! You return!" Ombric stood to greet the frazzled spirit standing in the doorway.

"You need to come with me to the southern ice continent right now. You're going to love this." The occupants of the room stared at him, not quite processing what he'd just said.

"Jack, how did you get here from the bottom of the world so quickly?" It was Mr. Qwerty who spoke. Jack explained in a jumble of words, impatient to impart the information so that they could get going _now. _Excited out of their minds, the three of them heaped on warm clothing to prepare for the arctic chill.

"Can your new ability take all of us?" Ombric looked hesitant, but hopeful.

"I think so. Don't ask me how I know, but I think so." They joined hands and Jack concentrated hard on his sanctuary in the arctic. It didn't take as much time as the first time he tried it, but it definitely took more energy to transport a wizard, a caterpillar, and a bear. He manipulated his energy to wrap around the whole group and he felt the familiar tug on his sternum. Before them, Big Root melted away and was replaced by Jack's sanctuary.

Ombric looked around in awe and waved his staff around. "The magic here is old, very old. It feels like the residual energy in Big Root." He felt around some more. "There are the residual energy signatures of many different spirits," he turned to Jack, "yours being the most recent."

"You're saying all of the Winter Spirits that ever existed found their way here at some point?"

"It is unlikely that _all _of them made it here, but a great many of them did, yes."

Jack showed them to the library and Mr. Qwerty got to work consuming the volumes, gaining the knowledge instantly as he munched through the tomes using Ombric's duplication spells so that the originals might be spared. The process took quite a lot of time, during which Ombric examined the rest of the Cavern, as Jack had started calling it. He explained that the Cavern had changed when he connected with its magic.

"It seems as if you might be able to change it at will. Want to give it a go?" Ombric gestured to the empty space in the room. They spent a good few hours changing the configuration of the space, testing its limits. The Cavern was capable of everything from furnishing the whole place to changing the layout all together. Jack settled on the layout he'd started with and looked at Ombric, who was watching it all happen with a hand contemplatively buried in his beard. "_Someone _made this a long time ago. The stone is some sort of physical manifestation of your Winter magic. Magic like mine cannot affect it."

Before they could puzzle more, Mr. B showed up to lead them back into the library. Mr. Qwerty had finished consuming the books. Looking bloated, but cheerful, Mr. Qwerty chirped excitedly at them as they entered. "It is a complete library of information on Winter spirits. It's quite curious, yes. It seems whoever made it to this place left diaries of their tenure as the Steward of Winter and expanded the information as time went on. Quite extraordinary."

"Did they have anything on why this place exists?"

"No, but I suspect the information may be locked away in that volume over there." Mr. Qwerty directed his attention to a book lying unobtrusively on a table in the corner. "I can't touch it. Nobody can."

Jack walked over and placed a hand on the worn leather bound journal. Suddenly, there were whispers in his head and he was transported to another place in another body, with thoughts that were not his own.

_The memory was from long ago, when man had first begun to dream. The Winter spirit danced among the houses, painting flowers of frost on all of the windows. Some people who saw him reacted badly to his otherworldly appearance and still others cursed him for bringing the bitter cold. He fled, but met other spirits like him. "Jokul Frosti, you will be my son," said one, "and we will be a family of the immortal and live in splendor." For a time he was happy. After a few centuries, however, darkness grew in his heart and he went mad because of the way people hated him, hated the frost that he'd thought so beautiful. Transplanting the Winter sprites into soldiers of ice, he raised an army and razed the earth. He killed indiscriminately and the world froze for a time until his family rose to stop him. The war was terrible and the world's belief in such old gods wavered and flickered out, plunging the world into darkness. When all his family finally lay dead at his feet, he woke from the haze of hatred in which he slept and wept black tears, bitter and cold. With his strength, he raised the molten rock at the bottom of the world and retreated into an impenetrable fortress of cold, needing to be left alone. _

Jack was thrust from the memories and found himself this time in a black expanse facing the frightening, but worn figure of Jokul Frosti, whose life he'd just witnessed. He was an old man with a crooked nose and blank eyes, a sorrowful expression permanently fixed on his worn face. The figure spoke.

"_I learned in later years of the existence of the other seasonal spirits, who were not plagued by the troubles that I had. They were loved by the people, while I, bringer of only death, was hated. The darkness that overtook me originated from the hatred shown to me all my life. It was only when my family was dead and gone forever that sorrow beat out the darkness and returned me to cruel sanity. If you hear me now, then you are a Winter spirit from the future. I was not the first, for Winter spirits have existed since the Earth first cooled enough to produce ice. Before Mother Nature installed the other spirits, Winter spirits appeared as a result of the world's hatred of the cold as I was. When one dies, another is quickly replaced, such is the persistence of such hatred. I now leave you with knowledge and this cave where I leave the last of my energy. The stone here will be imbued with my remains when I die. I cannot persist any longer with this yawning sorrow plaguing my mind. Perhaps with knowledge and time, one might break this cruel cycle and be the true Steward of Winter. I was but a false spirit, occupying this role because the world could not function without one to fill it. Winter has always been silent to me, but it is my hope that those who come after will be loved by it." Jokul Frosti crumbled into fine ice particles, at rest at last._

Jack woke on the floor where he'd fallen, head pillowed in Mr. B's furry lap. He was shaking with grief that wasn't his own, face wet with tears he hadn't known he'd shed. He sat up and told his worried friends what he'd seen. His voice shook as he spoke about Jokul Frosti and the Norse gods.

"He went mad because the people of the world hated him and he-" Jack had to pause, choking back a sob "he killed everybody he loved and then couldn't live with himself anymore."

Ombric comforted the shaking spirit and somberly muttered, "I remember that war. Terrible tragedy, all of the Norse gods dead and the people without help for quite some time. The weather was terribly harsh for decades after. I knew, of course, about the cycle he spoke of, Winter spirits wishing end for themselves. I hadn't known about any of Jokul Frosti's reasons for going mad. I doubt anybody did."

"That's because Winter is alone, the solitary season. When the snow covers all, it erases any evidence that the rest existed. There is a great darkness in the world that feeds on hatred. It possessed Jokul Frosti and took his sanity." Jack's voice took on an eerie tone that wasn't his own. He looked up at Ombric, stricken expression spreading across his face, "No, wait I didn't think that. That wasn't me. Why did I say that?"

Ombric grunted and said, "Jokul Frosti said he left you knowledge, yes? Perhaps that is what he meant. All of his knowledge and potentially the knowledge of everyone who came after was left to you and now you have it. The darkness you speak of is something I have fought for many years, but you can rest assured that it is dormant for now." Ombric left it at that and Jack thought it wise not to pry further.

The knowledge was sluggish and slow to come, but it was there, distinguishable from his own memory and terribly foreign to him. It was different from the collective unconscious of Winter he'd already encountered. This was real knowledge and experience that would have taken him years to accumulate. It wasn't anything specific like memories, but more like instructions on using his skills and manipulating magic that would take time to sort. Jack stood and wiped his face, the last dregs of Jokul Frosti's grief fading away from him. He emerged into the main room and instinctually made a new passage in the wall. Turning to Ombric, he said, "Can you make a portal to Big Root from here? I can tie your magic to this passage and you can come and go as you please."

Surprised at Jack's new found knowledge of magic, he complied and made the portal, allowing Jack to take control of the spell and anchor it to the passage, which lit up with energy. Walking through it, they found themselves within Big Root. It was late and Jack urged the three of them to sleep and come back whenever they wanted to. He went back to the Cavern and sat meditatively, monitoring the weather and applying his new skills to manipulate the energy with even greater ease and accuracy. Over the next few months, Jack and Ombric, with the help of Mr. B, outfitted the Cavern to be a suitable living space, complete with kitchens and fully furnished rooms. The Cavern was a defensible space imbued with great magic and it was practical to prepare it for any sort of emergency. The furniture could be grown out of the stone at Jack's command, but things like beds needed to be brought over from Santoff Claussen. They also worked out a system of pipes that lead to each of the rooms and the kitchen, supplied by the liquid water Jack had found under the first layer of ice on the continent. Ombric cast a web of spells that magically heated the water, the same system used in Big Root.

One day, just before Winter in the South was to come to an end, Jack made his way to the Sprites' Grove, as he'd come to call it. The sprites were excited to see him and scrambled to hug his legs as he waded in. He picked one up and experimentally messed with its energy stream. It grew until it was the size of Mr. B. It was the same method used by Jokul Frosti to create his army, but he used it without the intent to harm and his new gollums were far tamer than the soldiers from Jokul Frosti's time. He made a squad of about a hundred and allowed them free reign of the Cavern. While he was away, they could maintain and guard the Cavern. All of a sudden antsy to leave, he bade Ombric farewell and travelled to North America to see his sister. As the Cavern dissolved away and his village appeared, Jack was surprised to find himself standing face to face with a skinny girl with wild red hair blinking at him.

"You're early, Winter," she said, prodding him with her thin fingers, "I only just told the trees and animals to go to sleep. Don't make it snow until they've been tucked in."

Taking it in stride, Jack said, "I take it you're Autumn?"

The girl, who was a bit shorter than Jack, looked up at him with a surprised, toothy grin and said, "Ohh you _are _a bright one, aren't you? Yes, I am Autumn, but you may call me ash-like the tree, but also like the unused fuel left behind when you burn things."

Jack raised an eyebrow, but decided to go the polite route. He offered his hand and said, "It's good to finally meet you." Ash grabbed his hand and pumped it once before turning it over to examine his palms.

"Ohh Magu was totally right. You're a weird one. Not like us, not like the others, not like anything that has ever existed at all." She looked up at him, "You've been in pain up until now." It wasn't a question. Not waiting for an answer, she let go of his hand and whacked his shoulder companionably. "I have to go bring the rain to a forest down South. Remember what I told you, no snow until everyone's been tucked into their beds." With that, she phased into the wind.

Jack stood there for a while, understandably perplexed at what had just transpired. Magu was also right about Ash being unusual. He shrugged and continued on his way to the Bennett house. He flew in through a window and found Emily and Tom in the kitchen. They were elated at his return and guided him quickly to their room where a tiny baby slept in his cradle. Jack reached out a finger and gently brushed the soft tufts of hair on his head, cooing as the baby grabbed his finger.

"What's his name?" Jack turned to his sister, beaming.

"Ben, after dad." It was a good name.

"Hey, Ben. I'm your uber fun uncle Jack." The baby, who definitely had no idea what Jack was saying, bit Jack's finger with his newly emerging teeth. This was going to be a good Winter.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

Jack passed the rest of that Winter peacefully with his family, telling them all about the Cavern, but omitting what he'd seen in Jokul Frosti's journal. They didn't need to know any of that depressing stuff, better not to bring the darkness into their happy lives intentionally. Unlike his last visit, this one was not plagued with earth shattering disasters. The weather was back to normal and for once, he felt completely at ease with himself. He spent a lot of time with his nephew, swaddling him and lending Emily and Tom as much help as he could muster. His attention divided between them and the other village children, Winter passed in a whirlwind of fun activity. One evening, while he was watching Ben to give Emily and Tom a break from the crying baby, he caught a tendril of gold sand snaking in through the open window. It sprinkled a helping of the sand on the heads of all three of his family and retreated, leaving them smiling with dancing figures of the sweetest dreams floating over their heads. Emily and Tom dreamt of each other and little Ben, well, his dreams were indistinct blobs and faces, what you'd expect babies to dream of.

Curious, he followed it outside and was surprised to find hundreds of those tendrils leading back to a massive floating golden cloud. Flying high up into the air, he landed softly on the solid mass of sand that squished between his toes. In the center of the sea of gold, there was a little man waving his arms around like a conductor at work on stage with a tiny smile plastered onto his face. Jack took cautious steps forward, wondering at the feel of the sand he was standing on hundreds of feet in the air. While he was distracted, a thick coil of sand wrapped around his ankle and flipped him upside down, whipping him in a smooth arc and dangled him in front of the sand man. He looked Jack up and down, er, well, down and up and decided somehow that Jack was harmless and dropped him unceremoniously on his head. Jack groaned and looked up to see the sandman staring down at him, symbols flashing rapidfire over his head.

"Uh hi, I'm Jack Frost," Jack said as he righted himself, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snuck up on you."

The sandman's symbols stopped on an exclamation mark floating over his head, followed by a snowflake and a question mark.

"Yep, I'm the Steward of Winter," Jack chuckled as the sandman clapped his hands silently together. Suddenly, he could feel a presence worming into his mind. He got impressions, rather than words this time. Sandman, er, Sandy, as he got the impression to say in his mind, didn't communicate in words at all and never had. Sandy communicated to him that he was glad to meet Jack and that he'd sensed the weather regulate this last decade. Assisted by Sandy's sign language, Jack found out that Sandy was the being who made the dreams of everyone on Earth sweet and happy. Jack spent the whole evening with Sandy on the cloud of golden sand zipping around the world. It was strange, how the cloud moved. While he was sure that they must have been moving at speeds fast enough to peel the skin from his face, he felt nothing other than a slight and gentle breeze. It was as if the space around them moved, rather than the cloud. Sandy went about his business at every town and maneuvered fistfuls of dream sand into hundreds of tendrils that illuminated darkened streets and spawned fanciful creatures borne of peoples' dreams. Figures made completely of golden sand wandered through the streets and cast a benevolent glow of energy through the streets. The two spoke, or rather Jack spoke and Sandy signed, well through the night and Jack learned that Sandy was a pilot of a shooting star once, whatever that meant. Jack could tell Sandy was old-older perhaps than the other seasonal spirits. Jack didn't want to pry, but he really enjoyed the companionable silence he and Sandy shared.

Jack spent the next few evenings just hanging out with Sandy, who seemed to enjoy Jack's presence on the cloud. They spoke of things like the children of the village and Jack's control of the cold energies. Sandy delighted in being able to communicate so easily with someone and turned out to have a sense of humor that could rival Jack's own. He told wild stories about his friends, other immortals, who defended children from the darkness. Sandy didn't mention what the darkness was, but Jack shrugged it off, choosing instead to listen to the time Sandy put someone called the Bunnymund to sleep and painted him bright pink from head to toe. In turn, Jack told Sandy all about the time he surprised Mr. B by flying out at him from inside a snowman. The conversation inevitably moved towards Jokul Frosti's journal and Jack found himself telling the little man everything. They sat cross-legged, facing each other as Jack related his story from start to finish. Sandy interrupted from time to time with a question or two, but stayed silent for most of the story, the slightest hint of a frown forming on his face. When he finished, he was somehow afraid to look at Sandy, fearing the pity that he would find in the little man's face. Instead, however, Sandy stood and gave Jack a firm hug around the neck, which he could reach when Jack was seated. Then, Sandy communicated something to him that, for the first time, he couldn't understand. It felt something like weight and understanding. Jack didn't get it and he shook his head, looking apologetic.

The sand above Sandy's head formed a tiny sculpture of Jack and then of the sun and moon passing rapidly over its head. In Jack's mind, Sandy impressed upon him the idea of change, running like a circle over and over again. The sand above his head changed and the figure of Jack held out its hands and a heart appeared in it. Sandy took one of Jack's hands and placed it over Jack's chest, conveying the idea of stasis, not stagnancy, but unchanging preservation. The sand changed again. This time, Jack's figure held the world hovering between his palms and changed again to show the figure standing amidst other people, its hand resting over its heart, imitating the pose Jack still held. Sandy impressed the idea of weight and power and then suffering, then everything stopped. With his hands, Sandy took the figure of Jack and presented it to the real Jack, who sat still with his brow furrowed in confusion. The little man looked expectant, but patient as if giving Jack permission to think it through.

After a long silence, Jack spoke. "So even though immortality will make the world pass

by me, my heart won't change?" Sandy nodded sagely. He made the sun and moon pass over the figure's head again and impressed hollowness. A second figure appeared beside the first and Jack realized he was seeing an exact replica of the aged Jokul Frosti he'd seen in his vision. Taken aback, Jack shot a questioning look at Sandy, who seemed only to be waiting for him to speak.

"Time took away Jokul Frosti's humanity?" Jack was confused, not quite grasping the ideas as they came. Sandy shook his head and gently impressed the same ideas as before, emphasizing the hollowness as a lack of understanding, without ideas.

"Time separated Jokul from the world and took his understanding of it." Sany inclined his head and impressed the idea of a human, fragile and brief. "...his understanding of humanity and life." Sandy look pleased and the figure of Jokul dissolved.

"My heart won't change even though the world around me will. I understand life because I was alive and that is why I am different from Jokul." Sandy impressed suffering again and then humanity.

"I understand suffering? Human suffering? That's why I'm not like Jokul? Sandy, I'm not sure I follow. Jokul lost family too, all of them-the others before me-they lost so much. It felt so much worse than human suffering. I don't see how this makes me a better Winter spirit."

A whirlwind of impressions later, Jack spoke again, understanding a bit more. "So the kind of suffering that I know is human and that's important because it's the kind that heals. The other spirits suffered in a way that made them hate to the point that they destroyed things. I have compassion because I suffer and heal the human way, so my heart guards me from being like them." Jack held out his hands, "And my powers, even though I can't do a lot to change the way the world works, allow me to help out with life on Earth surviving. I do that anyway because I know human suffering and understand life because of the memories I keep in my heart. Other immortals lose the memory of life because time takes it away from them."

Finally satisfied, Sandy nodded and patted Jack on the shoulder as one would a child. Jack's heart felt lighter than it had in weeks and he looked at Sandy with new eyes.

"You know, I'm still taller than you even when I sit down." Sandy punched him good naturedly on the shoulder.

"Ow, ow okay, squatting not a good idea. Shoulders too easy to target. You have fists of stone, my friend." Sandy only smiled, as if to say _I have no idea what you mean._

For the rest of that Winter Jack spent every day with his family and every evening with Sandy. Over his long evening visits with Sandy, he got to know more about Sandy's friends, other immortals, as Jack was surprised to find. They were called the Guardians of Childhood who came to be within the past thousand years, kind of young by Sandy's standards, but old enough that Jack knew they must be pretty powerful. Sandy showed him the figure of a portly man with a growing beard, a hummingbird-human hybrid, and a...giant fluffy animal?  
"You telling me one of those bouncy things I saw in New Holland is an immortal?" Jack was confused. Evidently, Sandy was confused too. He didn't know anything about what the humans were calling landmasses these days. He was also unaware of what the "bouncy thing" Jack spoke of was. He flashed several pictures at Jack, including a rabbit, several amphibians, and things he'd seen on other planets.

"No, no, here. Lemme show you." Jack squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the creature he pictured in his mind. A translucent hopping creature with a long tail, long ears, and a pouch appeared in the air.

"It worked! See this? I think I heard a local call it a gangurru or something. Is this what he is?" Distracted by the marvelous trick Jack pulled, Sandy wasn't too concerned with what Jack wanted to call E. Aster Bunnymund. The creature had long ears like Aster and big feet like Aster and pouch like Aster's bag, so Sandy shrugged and just agreed with Jack, much more interested in examining the cool thing made of blue energy hopping around in mid-air. Jack looked incredulous, but entertained Sandy with his new trick for the rest of the evening.

The Winter passed quickly after that and Jack left more easily this time, knowing that he could come back the next year. Winter in the Southern half of the world was uneventful as usual and after a short stay in the Cavern, he flew off to explore parts of Africa and learned a fair bit of the native languages and even met another immortal named Anansi who looked like a giant spider with a human torso. They chatted in Anansi's tree for a time. Anansi was old, too, and talked to Jack about his experiences.

"Hmm yes I did some strange things when I was younger. I have many stories I could give you, but not many are still known to the humans. It's been much too long. I tricked a god who doesn't really exist anymore into giving me these stories and I went to a lot of trouble for them. It's silly to think of it now, but I'll tell you since you're so eager." Anansi folded his many legs underneath him and told his stories. Jack looked at him reverently, though there was something slightly off about Anansi. When Anansi was finished, Jack said, "You are absolutely my idol. Can I be your apprentice or something? You whole life is practically an amazing achievement in trickery and practical jokes."

"That is flattering, but no." Anansi flashed his white teeth, "I must return to my wife now, but do come back and show me that lovely staff of yours. I quite like it." Jack waved goodbye to Anansi jovially and flew away, though he held onto his staff a little tighter.

Jack spent most of Southern Winter in a similar manner and flew all around the Middle East and places where Winter longer, learning languages and meeting immortals. He didn't quite find everything or have time to learn everything, but he thought it was a good start. Jack spent some time thinking in the Cavern when Southern Winter first began. He thought about just sitting in a trance, idly monitoring the weather, but then thought about Jokul Frosti and the others who'd come before him. All of them had scrounged for knowledge on the world in an attempt to find out more about themselves and their powers. Who was he to take immortality for granted? If he was truly the first Winter spirit to be permanent, he could complete the knowledge he'd acquired from his predecessors and learn everything there was to learn. Jack shrugged mentally and thought, _meh it could be fun. _

Years passed this way and Jack spent Southern Winter shooting around the world, returning to the Cavern every now and then to record his discoveries in the library. When Northern Winter came, he'd set off for his village again and Ben would have grown as if Jack were observing his life in the pages of a book, rather than real life. It saddened Jack a little bit, but he understood that it couldn't be helped and got the most of his time with his family. Ben, who got all of Tom's muscle and all of Emily's wit, was a lovely child who loved his uncle Jack even if the adults couldn't see him. Together, Ben and Jack terrorized the town with surprise snowball attacks and built the best snow forts. Jack also took the liberty of teaching Ben to read. Officially, Tom's cousin from the larger colonies came over once in a while to teach him. As the family slept, Jack hitched a ride on Sandy's cloud and explored whatever continent they ended up on at a time. In the cool evenings, Ben perched on Jack's knee and listened to the latest about the customs and languages Jack picked up the night before. Emily and Tom raised Ben well and by the time Ben was a teenager, unable to fit on Jack's knee, could offer his input in engaging conversations with Jack.

"What? You're saying that there are monks who can sit in the snow for hours without getting frost bite?" Ben looked incredulously at his uncle. Jack only smiled, legs crossed on the comfortable chair Tom had fashioned just for him when Ben was about four.

"Yeah, it's amazing what human bodies can do with the right kind of focus. I checked out their temperatures and they were even hotter than the average temperature of a human body on a summer's day. Amazing."

"How do you think that works? Why even do it?"

"The heat energy they produced was connected to this line of belief that I could see wrapped around them. I'm telling you it was sheer willpower, like they willed their bodies to produce heat that wasn't there before. Of course, it still had to draw power from their energy reserves, but the technique isn't too different from how the kids use belief to see me. I dunno, maybe they do it just to see if they can."

"That's reasonable, but I really think it is connected to belief magic. You said they were Buddhist?" Jack nodded thoughtfully, "I think their 'chakra' is actually associated with belief magic. The immortals you met in China and India channeled belief magic that their believers generated. This meditating that they do is a pure belief energy generating process. Since the method is so direct, the heat is probably produced by their bodies that are acting like tiny suns that produce belief energy. That's amazing!"

A wooden spoon lightly rapped Ben on the head at the climax of his speech. "It might be amazing, son, but not as amazing as the amount of food energy you can put away. Come on, it's time for supper."

"Yes, mother," Ben said sheepily, ducking his head as he stood. He was still at least a foot taller than Emily. Jack watched the exchange in fond silence.

"He's a good kid, Em," he said when Ben had ducked outside to wash in the snow.

"Hmm I doubt that will last for long, he's already got his eyes set on a few girls," she smirked, the laugh lines appearing on her face, "but yes, I suppose he is. He's just like you when you were his age."

"What, ruggedly handsome and smart?"

"No, devilishly cheeky and hard to find at all times of the day," Emily plopped down where Ben sat before, "Good times."

"You're making me feel old. I know I've got white hair, but I'm only 50 or so, practically an infant."

"Oh yes, I'm practically an infant at 32 myself," Emily's eyes sparkled.

"Oy, careful, the neighbors might think I'm really married to an infant, the way you two are prattling on," Tom's voice sounded from the back room, where he'd been doing the looming. He threw something at Jack, who caught it nimbly between two fingers.

"What's this, Tom?" Jack inspected the garment he'd been handed. It was a simple shirt that was sturdy and identical to the one Tom wore, except that it was blue.

"Well, you brought us some fine indigo from India for Em's new dress, so I thought I'd make you something to replace that ratty thing you've been wearing." Tom chuckled.

"What, this old thing? I was making a fashion statement." He looked at the shirt appreciatively, "Thank you Tom, it's very well made." He stripped his old shirt off, the same one given to him in Big Root all those years ago, and pulled the new one on. Oh yes, blue was definitely his color.

More years passed and Ben finished his apprenticeship with his father and helped out at the forge full time. The village was growing and the new farmers and businesses brought in a lot of good business and the family lived well. Since he learned a good bit about medicine and hygiene from Jack's travels, Ben expanded on the blacksmith's tradition tooth pulling role and helped out with all maladies beyond the help of the midwife. Ben met his own wife pulling the tooth of an old man who decided to introduce the nice young blacksmith to his nice young granddaughter. He and Rosemary were wed when they were both new to adulthood and Rosemary, who never forgot Jack from the time she was a child, accepted her husband's unorthodox uncle with a smile and raucous laughter. Before he knew it, little Ben wasn't so little anymore and he had a baby of his own to take care of. Em and Tom got a little older every year and though he tried not to show it, Jack got this intense fearful impression that he was running out of time with them.

The day that Jack had been dreading came one day in the beginning of Northern Winter just before the turn of the century. Ben's grown son met him at the pond as he arrived, a worried expression on his face.

"Uncle Jack," he said, "you need to come with me."

In a small room in the new house they'd built, Emily lay in bed with Tom holding her hand on one side and Ben looking on from his father's side. She beckoned Jack over and they exchanged quiet words of farewell, nothing terribly serious, but they were comforting words. In the end, she died with a smile on her face and Jack, feeling as if it would be an injustice to her memory to cry, held the sorrow back until the body was buried and he was alone in front of her grave. He shed but few tears and spent an evening with her tombstone, talking to her spirit. When he was done, he felt as if he could move on and the pain in his heart was much diminished. She'd lived a long life, far longer than anyone could of hoped, and lived well surrounded by love.


	8. Chapter 8

In the decades after Emily's death, America declared its independence and Jack's tiny village started to grow. Human wars, Jack discovered, were fickle, and when viewed from Jack's perspective, were relatively quick and caused largely by a lack of communication. The American Revolution, for instance, was caused largely because Britain was too busy waging war with The rest of Europe to deal with the disquiet in the New World. Jack lost interest in human wars early on in his tenure as an immortal simply because there were so many of them, most of them small and not within reach of the Eurocentric world. The latest revolution was one of those that would be referred to with big capital letters in the future, but it was a moderate blip on Jack's mental timeline of human wars. Always, the cold that he brought could level the playing field and once all were shivering in the cold, they ceased to be on opposing sides and all instead battled against the elements. Jack never expected to be the presence that halted wars, but the snow prevented all armies from functioning and cooled heated blood that would have otherwise been spilt. Emily's descendents were still close with Jack and every month or so, he would meet with the heads of the family to discuss things he found during his travels. He was relieved when the war failed to reach them due to the village's remote location.

While Jack observed human wars to an extent, other wars occupied more of his attention. Jack found many more spirits that either existed as phenomenons of the weather, or manifestations of belief. These had their own wars that had greater consequences than human wars could ever produce. There were old spirits who inhabited the Earth's plates and when they rubbed each other the wrong way, earthquakes and tsunamis happened and changed landscapes in mere minutes. These big ones didn't take corporeal form, often only visible as swirling masses of pure energy. Other spirits, like the primitive serpents that existed in South America, or the dragons in Asia, lived slow lives because of their size, but could easily summon monsoons and fires. Jack usually let them do as they please and only ever stepped in to protect human settlements. Otherwise, he could accept them as natural manifestations of belief magic.

Around the beginning of the revolution, Jack stumbled across a black presence in Valley Forge hanging around the dark corners of the cramped hut where the soldiers slept. Jack was in Valley Forge trying to figure out why so many people were dying. Sure, disease was more likely to crop up in the bitter cold, but the mortality rate was uncommonly high, even to his standards. He tracked the nebulous black figure for a few days and decided it was the cause. Something about its mere presence prolonged illness and blackened moods. He cornered it one day as the sun was setting in the woods. _All things freeze, _his instincts seemed to say, so he froze the figure with the kind of ice that wasn't made out of water and froze fast and harsh. As he inspected his catch, he got a good look at what the creature was and recoiled at what he found. The dying sunlight lit the clear ice so that every detail of the creature might be seen. It was humanoid with its skeleton clearly visible through its inky, translucent flesh. Its face consisted of two yawning holes where its eyes should have been and a gaping mouth that leaked black ichor. It was a revolting creature to behold. With a firm strike of his staff, Jack shattered the ice and the creature into microscopic bits that could never be reassembled.

This encounter left Jack extremely worried and wary. His misgivings were not eased even as he found no more on the whole of the continent. Not knowing what to do, Jack travelled to Big Root to tell Ombric. As he described the creature, Ombrics face turned to stone and he paled considerably.

"This creature was in a war zone, you say?" Ombric spoke each word carefully running a hand through his beard.

"Yeah it was scary looking. Black flesh and veins everywhere. Do you know what it is? I thought at first that it was a Wendigo, but," he crinkled his nose, "that was definitely way, way scarier than a wendigo."

"Yes, it is something like a Wendigo, but more like a pure manifestation of the kinds of things that make Wendigos." Ombric looked at Jack with steel in his eyes. "They're demons, Jack."

Jack was stunned, a cold lump of dread forming in his chest. "Demons? That sounds...bad. What are they?"

"Your predecessors never encountered them?"

"No, this is all completely new. I have knowledge of tons of things-ghosts, devils, banshees, jiangshi, vampires- never demons." Jack paused, suddenly remembering something, "Unless you mean Christian demons, like fallen angels?"

"No, no. These were never anything at all like angels. These are the physical manifestation of all things that hide in the dark, negative things like fear and envy. Evil. The Christian demons you speak of were from the dark ages when the spirit of fear was the most powerful."

Jack gulped. "Why hadn't my predecessors seen them? In all of Earth's history, these hadn't appeared in the collective knowledge of my predecessors."

"They are from the Golden Age. Billions of years ago, there was a great empire in space-"

"Space? What's space?" Ombric looked pointedly at him. "Sorry, sorry. Bad habit."

"Space is the expanse that holds Earth and trillions of other planets and stars. When you look up into the night's sky, the great black sky that you see is space. Anyhow, there was once a great shining empire led by people who piloted ships the size of planets and space was teeming with life. Every life form resembled the immortals you know here on Earth and had control over some form of magic."

"Golden Age, huh? Sounds kind of like paradise."

"Well it was. The only problem was that evil, which exists everywhere life does, lurked in every dark corner. They could possess people and such pirates were a constant problem. The people of the Golden Age tried to seal that evil away all at once, but that plan backfired and, well, let's just say space isn't as full of life as it used to be."

"These demons are the same things from back then?"

"No, demons are from even before the Golden Age. The nightmares, manifestations of just fear, from the Golden Age needed to originate somewhere. Demons are the ultimate concentration of all evil, which includes fear and all other things."

"I defeated the one I found pretty easily. It doesn't look like they're that dangerous."

"No, they can't do a lot of physical damage, but their presence is an indication that fear and suffering are on the rise. Once one is born, its sole purpose is to keep evil there and spread it like a disease. That you only found one is a good sign. I can't say for sure since all of this is even older than me, but I think we can assume that this one was born as a result of the war only. If you find more, you need to kill them on sight."

"Can do. That thing was creepy anyway." The problem was that he did find more, once in a great while. The second, he found within a decade of the first. The third, he found in less time. Jack froze the fourth like before and took it with him to the Cavern and immediately went to fetch Ombric. The old man looked grave as he bent to take a closer look at the demon.

"This one is different than the ones mentioned in the old books."

Jack quirked an eyebrow. "How so?"

"It takes human form. Old demons tended to be indistinct black shapes. This is full on human with the same anatomy."

"What does that mean?"

"Possibly nothing, but more likely that they feed off of human suffering specifically." Ombric straightened. "Either way, it is not a good sign that you found more. Evil is getting more powerful."

"I think it might just be caused by the population increase. You say these things are concentrations of the evil in humanity, right?" Ombric nodded. "Well, the population's grown a _lot _in the last few decades, and I mean a _lot._ It's pretty much tripled or quadrupled. Since these guys exist wherever life exists, their numbers might be proportionate to the population."

"Well yes, that is a possibility, but it is still not a good thing. If they are growing in numbers, so is the power of the spirit of fear. It is unlikely, but if he should return, we are all in great danger."

Jack glanced back at the frozen demon before him. He brought his hand down in a slicing motion and the demon dissolved violently into oblivion.

Despite the ominous revelations he'd made with Ombric, Jack's first century passed with much positive growth on his part. Since his predecessors had knowledge of other immortal spirits, he knew where to look to find more. Curiously, however, he didn't run into Sandy's colleagues, the Guardians of Childhood, until sometime in the early 1800s when he came across a tiny fairy that looked like a hummingbird peaking out from under the pillow of Ben's grandson. Trying not to startle it, Jack crept up to it and quickly cupped both hands around the tiny fairy and opened his hands again just a crack to talk to it.

"Hey, little lady," he smiled to the fairy, who was startled, but unafraid. Seeing Jack's teeth, the fairy's body immediately relaxed and a deep red blush bloomed around her cheeks. Jack opened his hands all the way.

"Sorry, I was just curious. I spent a long time looking for a tooth fairy, but I'm never around long enough at night to see one. Are you THE toothfairy? You're kind of small."

The tooth fairy shook her head, still reeling from the absolute sparkling perfection of Jack's teeth. She squeaked and twittered at him and through some creative signing, managed to tell Jack that no, she wasn't the actual tooth fairy, but her mother was and many other tiny fairies like her could collect the teeth to make the work faster. No, she was not too small to carry baby teeth, but yes, the New World was still new to believing in the tooth fairy. While the tiny tooth fairy had other work to do and other teeth yet to be collected niggled in the back of her mind, she stayed and talked to the owner of the magnificent teeth so she could stare at the perfectly white enameled gems. When she could resist her mother's call no longer, she waved goodbye to Jack.

"Bye, baby tooth," Jack said as she fluttered away, "Don't be a stranger. Come visit me any time!"

She did visit as well as many of her sisters. Baby Tooth, as Jack had come to know the little fairy, came around every now and then to talk to Jack, but also to look at his teeth. Jack was oblivious to her fixation on his teeth, only happy to expand his circle of friends. Another half century passed before he met another of the Guardians. It was a late Winter and Jack was hanging around his village bringing down a soft snowfall over most of the coast and cold winds through the prairies. As he wandered through the grassy fields where the buffalo grazed, he suddenly felt the ground shift under him. Shooting up into the air, he was surprised to find the fuzzy head of a giant animal pop out of a hole in the ground.

"Crikey, this place is all flat land. I can't make heads or tails of this place." The furry creature spoke with the strange accent Jack heard around New Wales. It occurred to him that this must be the Easter er Kangaroo? Bunny?

"Good day," Jack said as he touched down in a flurry of snow in front of him, "I can help you find your way here if you're lost."

"Holy Dooley! Where did you come from?"

"Sorry, sorry. Bad habit." Jack perched on his staff and offered his hand in greeting, "I'm Jack Frost, the Steward of Winter. It's good to meet you."

"Aster," the Easter Kangaroo accepted the handshake, "I'm the Spirit of Easter or Spring or Hope, whatever you prefer."

"Wow, all those things? What, Mother Nature didn't have enough hands? Are you one of Magu's?"

"What, the Stewardess of Spring? No, I deal more with the idea of Spring, like hope and life and plenty. Easter's my main job. I'm the one who hides the googies for the ankle biters. Bit of a new thing, wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know."

"Ohh yes the children told me about the eggs they find on Easter. That's new. The eggs aren't, but hiding them is."

"Yes, yes, but none of that makes any difference if I can't find these bloody settlements."

"I know where all of them are, if you'd like my help." The gruff spirit looked at Jack warily, but agreed. However, he was not prepared when Jack grabbed his elbow and called for the winds to lift them both up in the air. Aster was too busy screaming to form coherent words, but when they touched down at the first settlement, he unleashed a terrified tirade at an amused Jack.

"You bloody Drongo! You could have killed me!" Aster yelled as his tirade came to an end, "I hate flying. I _hate _it. My paws were meant to be planted firmly on the ground and no where else." He shivered. "Thank, you but I think I prefer running."

"Well if you're sure-"

"I'm sure."

"It'll be slower-"  
"I don't care! Thank you for your help, but I think I'll be fine with running."

Bunny spent the rest of the day running behind Jack as he flew from settlement to settlement, still miffed about the flying experience. Jack was sure he liked the laid back kangaroo? Rabbit? Wallabee? He'd have to ask. He especially liked Aster's eyes, the exact color of new grass in Spring. Aster spent the next month in North America, scouting the place out. Belief in the Easter Kangaroo had evidently only reached the continent recently and he needed to carve tunnels mile by mile through the vast expanse of it all. Winter was coming to a close, but Jack figured he'd test his tolerance after all these years and stayed well into April when Spring had firmly arrived. Officially, he'd told Aster that he wanted to help out his tunnelling endeavor. In reality, he just wanted to figure out what species Aster was.

"Are you a cavvy?"

"No, Jack."

"A mongoose?"

"No."

"A raccoon?"

"NO." Aster huffed dejectedly and looked up from his map of tunnels, "If you must know, I'm a Pooka. On Earth, you might call me the equivalent to a rabbit."

All of a sudden, Jack was in his face. "You mean you're an _alien?_"

"No, I'm a rabbit."

"A _space rabbit?"_

Aster could only offer an exasperated sigh.

"Why are you still here?"

"You're fun and new."

"You're hanging around because I'm an _anomaly?_" Jack nodded with a silly grin plastered onto his face. Aster shook his head, but didn't object. He _was _pretty helpful, after all. Easter approached and went off without a hitch. The tunnels were completed expediently with Jack's help and his googies wandered through them and into their hiding places. There weren't very many children there compared to Europe, so the workload only marginally increased. As his job that year came to a close, Aster sought out Jack to celebrate.

"Aster Aster Aster!" Jack's excited voice sounded behind him. They were in Canada-ish at the last settlement of the day.

"What are you on about now?"

"We're done!"

Aster chuckled and ruffled Jack's fluffy white hair. "Yes, everything went well today." He stretched wearily. "This holiday is getting to be a lot of work."

"Must be worth it to make the little ones so happy."

"It is, mate."

Jack was elated and filled with excited energy over this new holiday he never got to experience since it happened in the thick of Spring. This buzzing excitement distracted him from the deteriorating state of his body and he didn't notice the pain right up until that moment when he collapsed in a dead faint into Aster's arms.

"Oy! Jack! What's wrong? Stay with me here."

Jack stirred but little, teeth clenched in pain as his body trembled with the waves of burning heat passing through his body. "'s okay, kangaroo, j's tired."

"You're obviously not okay, you larrikin."

"Ah so Winter has overtaxed himself," a voice behind them said.

"Who's there?" Aster crouched defensively over Jack.

"Heyyyyy Magu. Ca va?"

"Oy don't lapse into French on me here, mate. Stay with me."

Magu drifted closer and inspected Jack. "He is burning with fever. He has strayed too far from Winter. Curious, that he did not succumb sooner."

"He's a tough little thing. Said something about his tolerance being better. What should I do with him?"

"Antarctica sounds really gooooood, kangaroo," Jack slurred, "you'd like it there. I have a great tricked out cave and everything."

"You're speaking nonsense there, frostbite."

"No," Magu interjected, "it is his sanctuary there. He can go there to recover. Go now, before he melts." She waved them away as if they were menservants and Aster opened a tunnel to the bottom of the world, running through it like mad with Jack in his arms. They emerged in the thick of a blizzard and Aster whipped his head around searchingly.

"I can't see a bloody thing in this snow!" Aster trudged forlornly around in the snow that reached at least his knees.

"'S okay, kangaroo. I called my little buddy...be here in no time." Jack mumbled before dozing off, suddenly more comfortable in the freezing tundra. Shaking his head, Aster sniffed the air, looking for any sign of Jack's sanctuary. Suddenly, he felt himself being picked up by the scruff of his fur and Jack pried from his grasp. He squawked ungraciously at the intrusion and looked around to find that his captor was a giant ice creature with a featureless head examining him owlishly. Another stood nearby holding Jack protectively.

"_Little _buddy, Jack?" Aster snorted, still struggling to get out of the ice creature's grasp. Sensing that Jack was at ease with these creatures, Aster gave up the struggle with a huff and grudgingly allowed himself to be carried off into the blizzard.


End file.
